S.T.A.R. Corps Retrospective

Prior to Graven, S.T.A.R. Corps is the single largest work that I've ever actually written. Started in 1997 and coming to a close by 2002, the series was my first successful attempt to do exactly the kind of superhero project I’d spent ten years half-assing with the Power Universe: a long-running episodic adventure series with an ensemble cast, set in a world that organically grew into a more complex setting, and actually sticking with one team long enough to let them develop as characters.

The series initially started as a one-shot story I wrote based on a dream, but from this humble beginning, an entire multi-season series of episodic shorts would emerge. Unfortunately, this project would collapse under the weight of multiple revisions, before I finally killed it outright for personal reasons.

Nonetheless, I did actually write close to twenty distinct short stories for this series, on top of rewriting a few of them for later versions. All told, the sheer page count of all the completed shorts adds up to at least one Graven. Add in the full-series outline and encyclopedia, and you’ve got another whole novel on top of that.

This is going to be a fairly massive article, so strap yourselves in.

THE BEGINNING

The saga of STAR Corps began with a dream I had during sophomore year of High School. In the dream, I and many of my High School friends were superheroes. There were enough of us that we had multiple teams all stationed at the school, and we battled supervillains that apparently had nothing better to do than cause chaos on the school grounds.

It was a nonsensical dream, but when I woke up, I was greatly inspired turn it into a story. I went around the school and asked everyone who had appeared in the dream if they wanted to be part of the story. Most agreed to it, but I made sure to only include people who gave me their permission.

This was, to my recollection, the first time I wrote anything specifically with an audience in mind, and this was in the days before everyone had easy access to internet. I wouldn’t have home-based internet for several more years, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have known where to host the stories. So, I did things the good old fashioned way: I printed up copies of the story on a dot-matrix printer, drew and photo-copyied a cover, separated and stapled all the pages together, and distributed by hand some twenty-five copies around the school to the people who’d been part of the story, and few other interested parties. It was true old-school indy publishing.

THE ALTERED-EARTH

The Altered Earth is a one-shot short story which posited that the dream I’d had was, in fact, a memory of a real experience. What if somehow, temporarily, our world had been transformed into one where superheroes existed?

The cause of this would turn out to be the result of our world being bombarded by the shockwaves of a battle between two cosmic entities. Timeframe and Temprus, guardians of time and space, had come to blows, with Temprus emerging as the victor. With Timeframe defeated and imprisoned, he could not do the necessary repairs to fix the damages to reality.

The Dreammaster, guardian of the mind and the Dream Realm, intervened by fashioning a temporary bandage on our reality, partly sustaining it within a dream-simulation of sorts. However, this new patch was inherently unstable; superheroes existed in this patch-work universe because their physics-defying powers came from the fact that the universe was no longer structurally stable. The Dreammaster needed to free Timeframe to fully fix the damage. He could not face Temprus alone, however, and thus recruited a team of superheroes to battle Temprus as a distraction, while he saved the time guardian.

The superheroes, of course, were me and my friends. Because I had some minor ability of lucid dreaming, the Dreammaster was able to contact me through a series of visions, and instructed me to gather my teammates. We engaged Temprus in battle, and got casually thrashed, but succeeded in giving the Dreammaster time to free Timeframe, and the two were able to defeat and banish Temprus. However, the conflict shook the delicate patch-job holding our universe together, and the two guardians had to act fast to restore it. Using the memories of our team as a baseline, the Dreammaster and Timeframe reconstructed reality back to the way it was. In the end, the only hint that something had happened at all was the dream I experienced.

This story serves as a one-shot, and could have been left as it was. However, a several months later, the idea came back in force as I started to think about doing a possible series based on that dream reality. After some brainstorming on the matter, I decided I needed to start off with a sequel story to set things up.

THE DREAM WAR

The Dream War begins with my character waking up back in his hometown, despite presently living at a boarding school. I assume that it’s a dream, but notice how strangely vivid the dream is. Before I can speculate further, however, my town comes under attack from alien invaders! During the mad scramble to escape the onslaught, I am contacted by the Dreammaster, who informs me that the aliens are known as Genomites, and that while I am indeed dreaming, the Genomites themselves are actually, physically present in the mindscape. All the people of Earth have been locked in sleep and are now in a shared dream. Anyone whom the Genomites kill in the dream will go into a coma in the real world, and eventually die. The Genomite plan is to kill off humanity in the Dream Realm, and thus have no resistance when they descend on the planet in the physical world.

This, of course, should be impossible, and the Dreammaster should be able to simply kick them out of the world. However, something is preventing him, and he needs a team of superheroes to once again help him out. He restores my own powers, and sends me to recruit all the heroes from the Altered-Earth event. Unfortunately, while I’m able to find some of my old teammates, over half of them have already fallen to the invasion. (This was due to several people deciding they didn’t want to be part of the story, or I wasn’t able to get in touch with them to ask.)

Fortunately, new heroes (aka, new friends I’d made and I asked if they wanted to be included), rose to the challenge. The Dreammaster restored their powers, or granted them new ones. In a few cases, returning heroes’ powers manifested differently, and this was commented on as their powers better reflecting their own desires. (The real reason was that when I wrote the Altered-Earth, I based everyone’s powers on what they had in the dream. In this story, when I asked everyone’s permission again, I asked what powers they actually wanted this time around. Most stuck with what they had, while others decided to change them up.)

Once assembled, the Dreammaster was able to knock us all awake, and we re-assembled in the physical world, with our powers still functioning. After gaining the location of the Genomites mothership from the Dreammaster, we flew off into space to destroy it. There, we encountered Tempra, the guardian of spirit, who orchestrated this whole event out of revenge for her brother Temprus.

Tempra, however, could only partially manifest in the physical world, as most of her powers were focused on restraining the Dreammaster’s control of the Dream Realm. Moreover, only a minimal force of Genomites remained on the ship. One of the heroes managed to detonate the alien power core, utterly destroying the vessel, and injuring Tempra just enough that the Dreammaster was able to reassert control. The backlash of this drove Tempra back to her own realm, evicted the Genomites back into the waking world on the far side of the galaxy, and awakened everyone on Earth.

The story ended with our heroes retaining their powers, and the Dreammaster warning us that his and Timeframe’s attempts to restore our reality during the Altered-Earth Event did not return everything completely to normal. Earth was now blanketed in a fall-out of cosmic energy, like a cosmic scar very slowly fading as reality slowly repaired itself. The cosmic guardians did not want to tamper with things further, lest they cause further, irreversible damage. For better or worse, they would have to leave the fall-out in place until reality stabilized enough to safely remove it.

However, this energy would soon cause supernatural events to occur on Earth, including the emergence of new superhumans. Our own powers were, in fact, the first manifestations of this Power Potential. And thus the stage was set for us to defend the world as its foremost superhero team.

And likewise, thusly, began a years long project of planning and writing and re-writing and rebooting that lasted for the next few years.

SOURCES OF POWER

Overall, the STAR Corps Universe benefited from a limited-source model for the powers. The cosmic energy fall-out was a great plot device for introducing a wide variety of new characters, while also ensuring the universe wasn’t going to get clogged with too many inconsistencies from conflicting concepts.

At the time, I thought it was quite brilliant as set-ups went; I had legitimately come up with the idea entirely on my own, and I suppose that sense of novelty lent itself to my sticking with the series concept for so long. Being familiar only with DC and Marvel comics, I had never seen that sort of set up before.

I would, of course, find out a few years later that the trope of “energy wave hits Earth and causes super powers” was already well-established in older comics, and would become a pretty common staple among superhero fiction in the years to come. Turns out I wasn’t nearly so original as I thought. Oh, well.

POWER POTENTIAL

It would turn out the attempt to reboot reality back its former self was not entirely successful. A fall-out of cosmic energy now hovered around the Earth, and periodically would coalesce inside living beings, especially those who had been superhumans in the temporary reality. This Power Potential would lie dormant, until the person experienced some shock or trauma that would trigger their abilities.

Power Potential functions by binding a person to the fundamental essence of the universe, albeit limited to only certain facets. In this way, an empowered person can bend or break specific laws of reality to perform superhuman feats. These abilities can theoretically manifest in any number of ways; although at the time I wasn’t especially creative with the powers, the variety of options was considerable. Characters ran the gamut from super strength or speed to psychic abilities to elemental or energy control to shape shifting to raising the dead as zombies, etc.

Theoretically, a person’s powers were determined by a combination of the triggering event, as well as some facet of their personality or outlook on life or sense of purpose or self image. The triggering event was usually caused by a person being in danger, and the powers manifesting to protect them. So, for example, a person might get struck by a lightning bolt, and thereby gain lightning-related powers. However, depending on the person, the power might manifest wildly differently. One person might gain the power to control electrical fields in order to manipulate machines, another might gain magnetic powers, another might just get the basic ability to fire lightning bolts.

Other sources of extreme emotional state might trigger someone as well. Even if they themselves weren’t in danger, but say, their kid was in danger and the person needed to save them, their Power Potential might trigger to enable them to do so, granting speed or invulnerability to rescue their child. In a few cases, a person having an extreme goal they pursued with ruthless, single-minded obsession could trigger their Potential.

Occasionally as well, Power Potential could be triggered simply by exposure to certain other people’s powers, or from contact with Power Crystals, or being triggered by another supernatural being (such as the Dreammaster activating them). Power manifestations in these cases were notably less predictable, as the circumstances were more nebulous.

Power Potential only had a single triggering, and most powers were set at the level they were. Some powers lent themselves to improvement through practice, but by and large what you ended up with was what you got. In some versions of the series, characters gained boosts to their powers, this was always done through the use of plot devices.

Of special note in the case that when an animal awakened a Power Potential, their life-span and mental faculties were increased to human levels, and they would innately gain the power of “thought speak”, the ability to communicate telepathically on a basic level. Animals would project their thoughts into a person, and when the person spoke, they would sense the person’s immediate surface thought related to what they were saying. This ability transcended language barriers, as the communicated idea projected the intent of the words, and the receiving mind translated it to the appropriate phrasing instinctively.

The important thing to note here is that these powers are very specifically reality warping. Effectively, each super being’s power is unique to them, bending reality directly to impose a new function of physics onto the world. The powers do not all function on a consistent set of physical laws or magical rules that can be broadly exploited and applied to the majority of superhumans. What stops one fire-thrower might not work against another, because each person’s power is bending a different facet of reality to enable a similar result.

POWER CRYSTALS

Sometimes, instead of settling into a living being, a fraction of the cosmic fall-out condenses into a solid, crystalline form. These Power Crystals each have their own special, reality-warping properties, which can be used by anyone that holds them. Power Crystals usually have a singular function, the applications of which might be broadly varied, or might end up being very specific.

While Power Crystals normally seem to be usable indefinitely possibly recharging themselves from absorbing ambient cosmic energy, it is possible to drain the energy from a Crystal completely to give a general boost to an existing superhumans ability, or to super-charge a device with a long-lasting dose of power.

It is also possible to destroy Power Crystals by shattering them, but this is both difficult to do, and ill-advised: broken Power Crystals may unleash all their stored energy in a highly destructive explosion that either annihilates everything in the blast radius, or creates a permanent scar in reality reflecting its original abilities. An example would be a destroyed Power Crystal with time-manipulating properties creating a zone of frozen or hyper-accelerated time.

It is worth noting that the Power never seemed to coalesce into an inanimate object. Living beings could bind with the Power due to having a mind to latch onto it, but non-living objects didn’t have that ability. I don’t recall if this was an intentional thing, or if I just never thought to included “Powered Artifacts.” However, the implication here is that if enough energy was going to collect into an inanimate object, it would likely just condense into a Power Crystal anyway.

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

Technology levels on Earth in the SCU are the same as they were prior to the emergence of Power Potential, which is to say our world at around the 1990s. Technology progresses mostly similarly since then.

Certain superhumans are capable of creating advanced technology. Most of this tech, however, is not mass-reproducible, either because they violate physics in some way that means only the original builder can create functioning models, the technology requires special materials that are simply not available normally on Earth, or the science behind it may be within physical limits but is ungraspable by the normal human mind. It can also be that the technology in question just isn’t very practical for common use; why use a laser pistol that is difficult to recharge mid-battle, when a normal gun and ammo clips will do just fine?

As such, very few inventions or innovations by superhuman geniuses and technopaths trickle down to the common person, other than slight enhancements to existing technologies. Likewise, while alien races with advanced tech exist, they have very little direct contact with Earth, and are not sharing their resources.

ALIEN INFLUENCE

Throughout the series, at least two alien races are seen, a couple others are named, and dozens more are implied to exist. Earth happens to be in a particularly barren sector of the galaxy, however, hence most advanced species are uninterested in the world. But visitants do occasionally appear on the planet, either by accident, or on secretive scouting missions. These aliens, of course, often have extra abilities granted by their inhuman biologies, as well as their own advanced technologies.

AWAKENED DREAMERS

Being connected to the Greater Dream Realm, the SCU is connected to my Dream Wars mythos (not to be confused with the Dream Wars short-story). Several thousand people across the planet are Awakened Dreamers, having the ability of lucid dreaming, and dozens may be Dream Warriors. These individuals, while asleep, are capable of leaving their personal dreamscapes to travel through the Realm directly, and even enter the dreams of others. Many Awakened Dreamers are not fully aware of their ability or significance when awake, even those who vividly remember their adventures. At least a couple members of the superhuman community are also Awakened Dreamers.

VERSION 4 SPECIFIC

Despite having a good enough single-source premise with Power Potential, the 4^th version of the series, which had by far the most development, ended up going the full cartoon/comic book route of throwing in other sources of powers anyway. While aliens and dream powers had been established as early as the first two stories, Version 4 piled on the extra ingredients to make the setting even more comic booky.

HEAVEN and HELL

Demons and Angels appear on Earth on several occasions, bringing with them magic of supernal or infernal power. The handful of angels and demons seen in the series are phenomenally powerful, physical juggernauts gifted with magic that challenges even the reality-warping abilities of Power Potential. However, most divine and infernal entities are implied to be much weaker by comparison, but still outclass any normal human. Of course, none but the rulers of Heaven and Hell are even close to a match for the Cosmic Guardians of the AEP Mutliverse.

ANCIENT POWERS (MAGIC)

More traditional powers of sorcery and ritual magic once existed in the times of Antiquity. Whether this was always in the case, or whether the cosmic accident that formed the SCU retroactively caused it to existed, true magic had not been seen on Earth for thousands of years. The cosmic fall-out, however, seems to have re-awakened the spark of magic, reviving several ancient sorcerers and monsters that had laid long dormant.

SAVAGER ASPECTS

Savager Aspects are bestial spirits that can bond to a person, granting them animalistic powers and the ability to obtain a werecreature form. They are part of the unique totemic magic of the Savagers, a hidden tribe of humans who have remained apart from modern society. Like other forms of Ancient Powers, it seems to be a long-lost power recently revived thanks to the fall-out of cosmic energies.

GENETIC ENGINEERING

Essentially not possible under normal circumstances, but in at least one story, it was revealed that some minor forms of controlled mutation was discovered by a mad scientist, enabling the creation of super soldiers years prior to the emergence of Power Potential. However, this scientist was quickly killed after his first successful experiments, and the methods were lost with him. Once again, whether this had always been a part of the original universe’s history, or was retroactively applied is unknown.

THE PRIMAL DREAM POWER

A cosmic energy source separate from any of the previously mentioned cosmic powers or magic. This was held briefly by one of the heroes, before it was given up.

CONNECTIONS TO THE ALTERNATE-EARTH PRODUCTIONS MULTIVERSE

The STAR Corps Universe is “dimensionally adjacent” to the multiverse cluster of the AEPM. While not officially a part of it, the reality is near enough to be influenced by it. The Altered-Earth and its sequel, The Dream Wars, feature the AEPM’s cosmic guardians, the Dreammaster, Timeframe, Temprus, and Tempra. In fact, these two stories were the debut work for the latter three, and the Dreammaster continued to make appearances in the 4^th version the series. The cosmic battle between these four seems to have at least partially linked the STAR Corps’ reality to the AEP Multiverse.

Likewise, the STAR Corps universe shares access to the Greater Dream Realm that touches all my worlds, and on at least one occasion, a crossover with the New Force was achieved by travel through Hell, implying the Hells of the SCU and AEPM are similarly linked, or possibly the same.

The SCU itself managed to dodge becoming involved directly in the Multivesral War, however during this year-long event, it was revealed that at least one version of the SCU is, in fact, one of the dozens of pocket realities that exist among the AEPM. It seems that the mundane version of the SCU was fully fixed after all, and the SCU seen in the series is an existential echo of the altered timeline. When the universe was “fixed”, Timeframe and the Dreammaster separated the warped version of the reality into its own dimension in order to contain and seal off the damaging effects of the alteration.

This was a retcon to explain how not only the cosmic energy fall-out stayed around Earth, but also how other forms of power such as demons and aliens became involved in the world. It could also explain why there were several versions of the SCU, as the pocket realities timeline underwent fluctuations as it tried to stabilize itself. In that sense, every version listed would technically be canon, though how much “canon” matters at that point is debatable.

CAST

To avoid writing an entire novel of notes, I shall only give a brief overview of the main groups consistently involved across the different versions. One thing to note is that most of the heroes were based directly on friends of mine. With their permission, I used their real names and likenesses as the basis for these characters, as that was the whole gimmick of the Altered-Earth plotline.

While my versions did develop into their own characters beyond the likeness, there came a point after a couple years where it started to feel awkward that I was still using my friends’ actual names and appearances. This is one big reason I ultimately decided to quit the series. As such, for the duration of the article, I’m only going to referring the characters by their superhero personas.

S.T.A.R. CORPS

The titular team S.T.A.R. Corps was split up into two sub-groups. The team is almost entirely composed of the “based on real life people” characters, and most were either present during The Altered-Earth or were recruited during The Dream War.

S.T.A.R. stands for Superhuman Terran Annihilation Resistance, and yes, even the team thought it was stupid, but no one could come up with a better alternative since “all the good superhero team names were already taken.”

AMERICAN DIVISION / TEAM SUPREME

Speedmonger – Superhuman speed. Awakened Dreamer. Quick to leap into action, and enthusiastic about being a superhero. He’s the one who really pushed for the team to come together. This was my self-insert, and was thus the main character of The Altered-Earth and The Dream War.

Rain – Power to become and control water, mist, and ice. Level-headed and tended to go with the flow.

Eletroshock – The power to transform into a robotic form, that could then transform into numerous different machines and vehicles. Liked using his powers to do cool stuff.

Jericho – Telekinesis, mind-over-body post-human physical enhancement, staff fighter. Field leader and tactician. Level-headed and quick-thinking.

Leech – Could absorb most forms of energy and convert it into temporary superpowers, usually physical enhancements and energy blasts. Second in command. Usually laid back, but found himself stepping into the leadership role when the situation demanded it.

Silver Fox – Creates a silvery skin-covering that grants her superhuman strength, durability, and optic lasers. Fun loving and courageous.

Thundershock – Flight, lightning bolt projection, minor electrokinesis, electrosense. Brave, but reluctant about being a superhero.

Delphi – Superhuman intelligence, used a power armor and gadgets. Base-builder and technical support. Friendly and had a wry wit.

Rock – Low-level super strength and agility, electric eye-blasts. Cool guy with a cool attitude.

Sprite – Can become intangible or diamond-tough, flight. Friendly, but with a sarcastic sense of humor.

Slapstick – Elastic body. Comedian of the group.

Immortal Mac – A scott terrier with immense physical strength, durability, flight, and force blast barks. Enhanced mind and thought-speak ability. Had a grumpy old man attitude, but was loyal to the team. He was based on my pet Scottie.

The American Division was based out of St. Louis, Missouri. There were at least a dozen other characters who appeared in the Altered-Earth who ended up not resuming their  superhero roles in the series, although made cameo appearances in some episodes.

GLOBAL DIVISION / EUROSTRIKE

Maximal – Energy form, energy control and conversion. Leader. Courageous, but as one of the most powerful heroes, he felt a strong sense of duty as a hero. German.

Specter – Light form, light control. Second in command. Friendly and a bit flirty, but she also had a strong sense of duty to her position. Belgian.

Nexus – Teleportation portals, telekinetic energy tendrils. Friendly and helpful. German.

Sigma – Moderate super strength and durability, flight, x-ray vision. Chafed at his role as a superhero, and eventually struck on out his own to become an anti-hero. German.

Powerbomb – Matter-to-energy and energy-to-matter conversion. Friendly and a bit of a joker. He sacrificed his life during the Dream War, but was resurrected by Mr. Dead, and this fact haunts him throughout the series. Australian.

Jazz – Flight, sonic scream, sound control. Friendly and helpful, buddies with Powerbomb. Australian.

Hypermind – Telepahty, telekinesis, astral projection. Had a studious personality with a bit of a dry wit. Russian.

The Global Division had a base in Germany, since several of the members were German, but the other members all came from different countries. This is because the group was initially formed from exchange students I’d known in High School, most of whom were German. This was also why the team was small; so small, in fact, that I ended up adding new characters to the team who were completely original (as in, not based on any real life persons). To somewhat compensate for this, though, the group held some of the most powerful members of the whole S.T.A.R. Corps organization.

Later versions of the series dropped the original characters for a few more real-life characters as I befriended a few more exchange students who were interested in the story and wanted to be included. However, by that point, the series was already winding down into a close, and so never got to really be a part of the project the way the listed people were.

S.T.A.R. FORCE

Although the series featured many villains, this particular group of rogues repeatedly came to blows with STAR Corps throughout the series. At least half the episodes of the series involved STAR Force to some capacity: either they were the primary antagonists, or some of their members would be individually trying to fulfill their own agendas. As such, this team of villains was as much a part of the regular cast as the heroes.

The S.T.A.R. in STAR Force stood for Superhero Termination And Ruination, as a mockery to the STAR Corps team. The group was formed from the first handful of villains to appear in the series, gathered together by the immensely powerful villain Ares to fulfill his ambitions. He seemingly wanted to conquer the world and become all powerful through collecting Power Crystals, but for some reason, he also became obsessively fixated on destroying STAR Corps. However, despite probably being powerful enough to have achieved this on his own, he instead contented himself with forming a team of minions to send against STAR Corps on occasion, and otherwise attempted to fulfill various machinations that the hero teams would manage to stop just in time, forcing Ares into a retreat.

I believe that at the time I was more heavily inspired by cartoons of the “good team vs evil team” variety, as opposed to the “heroes versus multiple separate rogues” variety. Just as the Autobots always fought the Decepticons, the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles always fought Shredder and Krang, the Power Rangers always fought the villain of the season, etc, STAR Force was there to give STAR Corps a persistent enemy to always fight.

Ares – Leader and tyrant. Possessed numerous powers including vast super strength and durability, flight, energy blasts, force fields, telekinesis, ability to control war machines, teleportation, and extra-sensory perception. Cunning and megalomaniacal, he presents himself as a ruthless warlord.

In the 3^rd and 4^th version of the series, Ares is the leader of the team and the one who forms it. Despite his ambitions, he didn’t actually do much conquering. For some reason, he is obsessed with defeating STAR Corps, but fails to do so mostly out of plot contrivance. His exact goals, his plans for the future once he actually beats the heroes, are actually never entirely clear.

In the 5^th and 6^th versions of the series, Ares is very different character. He is changed into an effective warlord who conquers the nation of Greece, and proceeds to try and expand his empire. He becomes more of a cunning dictator seeking to bring order to a planet where superhuman powers are a dangerously chaotic element.

Mr. Dead – A powerful undead with the ability to decay flesh at a touch, unleash a flesh-decaying mist, fly, sense a being’s life force, regenerate from nearly any damage, and resurrect thousands of dead beings as zombies. However, he could also heal and bring the dead fully back to life.

Mr. Dead is irrevocably insane, the result of his Power Potential activating shortly after his death. He believes himself to be the horror monster that he appears, and as such, seeks to enjoy himself by terrorizing people. He’s actually fairly intelligent and cunning when he wants to be, but he takes more of a support role in the group, occasionally venturing out to have some fun on his own.

In the 5^th and 6^th versions of the story, Mr. Dead is the one who leads STAR Force, eventually renaming the team the Death Riders as he adds other zombified superhumans to the roster.

Mythos – Ability to transform into mythical beasts, although specifically ones with no human attributes. He was actually a clone of Rain created by Mr. Dead and Ares, and possesses Rain’s original powers from the Altered-Earth. Mythos is sadistic and revels in his own power. He doesn’t specifically have it out for Rain, but enjoys messing with him for kicks.

Manic – Superhuman speed and strength. An insane serial killer who revels in his newfound powers to commit even more murders. He often battled Speedmonger as a rival speedster, which usually resulted in Speedmonger getting the crap kicked out of him by Manic’s superior strength, but at least managing to keep the killer busy until another hero could help him defeat the villain.

Jackie’s Lantern – Plant-like armor with a jack-o-lantern head, pyrokinesis, flight. A former junkie and gang member who is completely insane and loves to destroy things.

The Demonical Three – A trio of Goblinoid miscreants that always acted together. Implied to be brothers. All three were general nuisances more than anything else, but were still crazy enough to stick with the group of villains. They each had a unique physical gimmick, but all three could link hands and teleport around as a bolt of lightning.

-Spike – Enhanced agility, large arm-spikes. Leader to the others, and thus the bossiest.

-Spine – Grows and fires tranquilizing spines. Most willing to start trouble.

-Smash – Super strength and durability. Silent and obedient, but flies into a rage if he gets frustrated.

VERSIONS

STAR Corps as a series underwent several revisions before I finally settled down to start writing it. While all versions of the series began with The Altered-Earth as the origin point, how the series proceeded from there would shift around drastically.

ALPHA STAGE VERSIONS

Version 1 – This was really more of a prototype concept for the series, imagining what further adventures in the original dream setting would have been like. There wasn’t a real plan here, mostly notes of episode ideas. I had thought to cut down the size of the team, but couldn’t decide who to keep and who to ditch.

Version 2 – This was a more serious attempt to plan the series out, and I started to fully outline episode ideas. However, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to set up the series; I even debated the idea of STAR Corps being dragged into the Power Universe in order to make it work, but that never felt right. I also tried to return the team to its full roster as seen in the Altered-Earth, but that proved to be too large a cast to juggle.

Version 3 – This is where I realized I definitely wanted STAR Corps to distinctly take place in its own setting, and that I needed a sequel story to set things in motion. The Dream War was written to cover this gap, and thus the series proper could begin. However, even here, I had no idea how to proceed, other than the origins of a couple of villains. I did write a couple episodes of the series, but was unsatisfied with the result.

At this time, STAR Corps was still envisioned as one team, with Maximal and Specter just flying over from Europe to join the American heroes on the regular. Of note, however, is that this is where STAR Force was introduced.

VERSION 4: ULTRA-WORLD

This was the big one, where the whole series really came together. I’d made new friends and added them into the project, trimmed off other characters of friends who weren’t interested. Among the new friends were more exchange students, and this thus gave me enough European characters that I decided to make them a separate group, and thus the title would switch off between the two teams regularly.

Likewise, this is where I settled on including powers beyond the initial Power Potential concept, introducing more aliens, and eventually including things like ancient magic and demons as threats. STAR Force, meanwhile, was solidified as the enemy of STAR Corps, battling both of the hero groups.

I went all-in with this version, going so far as to “brand” the setting with it’s own “imprint” to differentiate it from the rest of my work at the time. Ultra-World was the official designation for all things STAR Corps related. (This was likely just for the sake of differentiation when it came to potential future crossovers: the New Force/STAR Corps team-up could be labeled a “Power Universe/Ultra-World Crossover.”)

Version 4 was given a full-outline for the entire series covering every planned episode. I even wrote a massive encyclopedia with detailed profiles on every character and concept, referring to the events of this series. I added in extra elements of ancient magic, more aliens, crossovers with the Power Universe, demons and angels, savager aspects, and power upgrades for the heroes. I also kept adding more original superhero characters to form other teams to help protect the world, just for the sake of giving STAR Corps other heroes to team up with. Truthfully, Version 4 by itself could fill an entire retrospective article on its own if I wanted to give the full details. In the briefest summary I can manage, the series was broken down into five seasons:

Season One – Introductions of the heroes and the formation of the different factions of STAR Corps. Major villains are introduced as solo threats, with STAR Force forming at the season’s end. A few solo heroes are introduced as potential rivals to contend with.

Season Two – STAR Force establishes itself as a returning threat. Demonic villains appear, but are countered by angelic heroes. The D’Kari aliens appear as a mysterious potential adversary, but become allies of the heroes. Retired superheroes from the first two stories are brought back for a guest arc, but return to civilian life.

Season Three – Ares concentrates on collecting Power Crystals. Salvaged Genomite technology becomes a threat, until the heroes are able to destroy the last of it. The D’Kari aliens make a brief return. More empowered animals are introduced, setting up potential conflict between humans and ascended beasts that is fortunately resolved in a truce. Speedmonger is briefly empowered to godlike levels with a plot device, but the power is soon sacrificed to fix an outbreak of unstable Power Potentials.

Season Four – Introduces the return of the Ancient Powers of Magic to the world by unleashing the villainous Warlock, becoming a rival conqueror to Ares. Ares, meanwhile, manages to use magic to mind control half the members of STAR Corps. However, this leads to the introduction of the Savager Aspects to break those members free, while giving them new beast-shifting powers. Jericho is given a hefty power upgrade through temporary position by an ancient ghost. The Warlock is ultimately defeated by the season’s end.

Season Five – The time traveler Trax briefly disrupts the timeline, threatening to break reality, secretly brainwashing several members of STAR Corps and STAR Force to be his loyal minions. However, Trax is eventually defeated, and the disruptions are fixed using Power Crystals. Speedmonger briefly leaves the team and ends up encountering a new team of heroes called the Joyriders. Ares decides to eliminate STAR Corps once and for all, and allies himself with Demonic forces, enhancing his team into the Satanic STAR Force. The series ends with a final, brutal battle that sees most of STAR Force and several members of STAR Corps slain. However, the return of angelic and alien allies, and all of the side heroes of the series, helps mitigate some of the disaster. Ares is finally destroyed in an all-out battle against their combined powers. With their greatest threats eliminated, the members of STAR Corps can now dedicate their powers to doing greater good in the world beyond just being vigilantes.

All told, this was a fully conceived teen superhero adventure cartoon mapped out to a five-season plan that perfectly fit in with the rather silly toy commercial Saturday morning cartoons I was a fan of as a kid.

And that, ultimately, was the downfall of this version. After writing The Dream War and mapping out the whole series, I wrote thirteen full episodes, as well as the New Force crossover special, before I stopped, looked back at everything, and realized just how embarrassingly cartoony the whole thing was. At this point, I was a senior in High School, my writing skill was improving and my story concepts were starting to evolve beyond the surface level of Saturday morning cartoon plots. I looked back through the series and cringed so hard, I quit the whole thing immediately partway through writing episode fourteen.

Still, given that I had planned out about fifty episodes and some specials for the series total, I can at least say that I got 25% through it, which is substantially farther than any single series, written or drawn, I had worked on before. And to be fair, the completed episodes do function as stand alone stories, so it’s not like I quit partway through a novel.

Unfortunately, while I can look back on this series with nostalgia for the fun I had working on it, it is not something I would ever want to show again. The first handful of episodes are particularly terrible in terms of plotting; villains just show up out of no where to cause chaos, heroes go fight them, the end. Later episodes got better as I could build from what I’d previously set up, but even the 80s cartoons I rag on had better actual storytelling beats than most issues of the series.

VERSION 5: TWO SERIES, TOO SERIOUS

This was a dedicated rewrite to give the series a more mature feel. Care was taken to make more complex plots and to trim out a ton of the bloat of extra concepts that I felt had turned Version 4 into too much of a cartoon. Ancient Magics, Savager Aspects, Demons, Angels, Power Universe Crossovers, and Alien Visitants were all ditched. Even Power Crystals were left out of this version.

I also purged a considerable number of “extra” characters, i.e., most of the “original” hero characters and many “real person” characters who were friends I either no longer talked to, who requested to be removed the series, or who I felt had never had a big enough role in the previous versions to justify keeping around. In exchange, though, a few new “real person” characters based on new friends were swapped in.

Due to having lost all digital copies of The Dream War, I ended up writing a brand new sequel to set-up the series in its place, The Guardian Factor. It was a largely boring story, to the point that I can barely even remember what it was about, but did the job of setting up the new series with a more serious tone.

I also officially split the STAR Corps title into two separate ones: Team Supreme and Eurostrike. In so doing, I tried to distinguish the two groups further.

Team Supreme largely dealt with slightly more light-hearted adventures against traditional supervillains. STAR Force took longer to form, and when they did, they served a different function: the team was formed by Ares from behind the scenes, for the purpose of keeping the American heroes too busy to aid the European team against the warlord’s ambitions.

As such, this version of STAR Force was lead by Mr. Dead, and Mythos was never created. Their main goal of the group was to spread wide-scale destruction. This would culminate in Mr. Dead attempting to threaten the whole of North America with a zombie apocalypse, with an army of undead superhumans bolstering his forces. The heroes would eventually win, in part thanks to Ares helping sabotage Mr. Dead’s progress, the warlord not wishing the insane necromancer to become a threat to his own ambitions.

Eurostrike, however, dealt directly with Ares as their primary nemesis. As mentioned in the Cast section, Ares was significantly changed for this version. This time he actually was a conqueror who believed he was uniquely qualified to rule the world, hoping to bring order to the planet before the continued emergence of random superhumans caused too much chaos to civilization. In the beginning of the series, he successfully takes over the country of Greece, and begins a long-term campaign to spread his empire from there. This version of Ares was more of a Machiavellian dictator, just as powerful as ever, but more manipulative in his schemes, with the goal of making his nation into a global superpower.

However, Ares’ new throne would be usurped by his traitorous underlings, Saturn and Uranus, and the second half of the Eurostrike series focused on the team actually helping Ares reclaim his throne from the more blatantly evil tyrants, in exchange for Ares agreeing to compromise on his more ruthless policies, and cease his expansion efforts.

I started writing this version by going back and first re-writing a couple of the earliest episodes of Version 4, but by the time I got started on the new issues for the series, I realized I was actually not very interested in this new version.

Team Supreme’s adventures had become too straight-forward “punch the bad guy” adventures with none of the fun elements of Version 4; Mr. Dead by himself just wasn’t a compelling arch-nemesis without Ares’ schemes and Mythos’ rebellious attitude; the other members were too straightforwardly crazy, and didn’t provide a good team balance.

Likewise, I found I really wasn’t that interested in the political faction war I had set up for Eurostrike’s adventures. And on top of all that, The Guardian Factor flat-out sucked as a set-up story for the series. And so, after just a couple of months, I found myself once again hitting the reset button.

VERSION 6: THE COMPROMISE

This was ostensibly to be the “fully corrected” version of the series, combining the more fun and adventurous elements of Version 4, with the more complex character work of Version 5. I even went back and manually re-typed The Dream War story off the one physical copy I had left. (No, I didn’t have access to a scanner, nor were there any pdf-to-text document conversion programs at the time, least not that I was aware of.)

Ancient Magics, Savager Aspects, Demons, Angels, and Power Universe Crossovers were still left out. Aliens and Dream Realm shenanigans were acknowledge to exist, due to the events of The Dream War, but were not planned to be factored in to future stories other than perhaps a one-shot encounter with the D’Kari. Power Potential and Power Crystals once again became the primary focus through which all super powered events occurred. Some of the side “original” characters were also brought back into the fray, acting as rival or ally teams to STAR Corps.

Ares was largely similar to his Version 5 self, conquering Greece and slowly trying to expand his empire, but I dropped the traitors overthrowing him, and instead, he became more of a Doctor Doom figure. Seeking ever greater power, but genuinely interested in ruling the world because he believed only he could do it right. Gone was his obsession with STAR Corps, other than the fact that they were the heroes who kept opposing him. He did return to trying to collect Power Crystals, which informed most of the plots involving him.

STAR Force was still run by Mr. Dead, who was given a more sly personality, and Mythos was once again part of the team to flesh the group out more. While the group had always been a group of crazies, they were now less focused on overt destruction, and instead acted more like a group of horror monster villains, preying up the city for the sake of spreading fear and chaos.

This version of the series also saw plans for a Continuation series set twenty years in the future. Superhuman battles had ravaged parts of civilization as conflicts grew out of control, but eventually a new balance of law and order had been formed with many superhumans working as a peace keeper force, and several STAR Corps members now operating as important government figures or captains of industry. Earth also now had limited contact with aliens such as the D’Kari, but for now Earth was on a probation of sorts, as other races found superhumans to be too risky to deal with.

However, by this point, I had finally started to tire of working on the series, and I found it more difficult to actually balance the serious and fun elements the way I wanted to. Things had become something of a cluster fuck conceptually. This was also during the time of the AEP’s Multiversal War, and I think this is where I ultimately concluded with the idea that the entire STAR Corps Universe was just another pocket dimension within the AEP, its multiple versions the result of dimensional instability. In the end, this version of the project would end in a fizzle as I just dropped it to move on to other things.

THE ALTERED-EARTH NOVEL RE-WRITE

About a year later, dissatisfied with how things had turned out with STAR Corps, I decided to go back and try to restart the whole thing from scratch. Initially, the idea was to just re-write The Altered-Earth as a fully fleshed out novel. This version would be a little more mature and complex of a take on the events of the story, and would remove all connections to the AEPM, since I’d closed that whole project off.

While the Dream Event would still be relevant, the alterations to reality would instead be the result of a sort of cosmic natural disaster causing a glitch in reality that the heroes would have to somehow fix, and this would restore reality back to the mundane world, but with the possibility of Power Potential lingering.

Ultimately, however, the novel really came together. I got about thirty pages written, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the plot work out, or settle on the cast I wanted to use. Since the plan was only for a single novel with no series to follow, I don’t technically consider this a “version” of the STAR Corps series, but it is a notable step in development in that it showed I wasn’t done with the series yet.

VERSION 7: A FRESH START

This was the last version of the series I wrote, an attempt at a complete, from-scratch re-imagining of the series. The biggest change is that does not use The Altered-Earth as its starting point. In this version of the universe, Power Potential simply appeared one day a few years prior, granting certain humans incredible powers. All other supernatural and sci-fi elements like magic and demons and aliens were left out. Power Crystals were likewise absent at first; I felt that if I was going to ever include them, they’d be treated as a much bigger deal, rare and powerful enough that the discovery of one would be enough to base a whole large-scale event around.

In this version of the setting, due to world governments recognizing that it takes superhumans to defeat superhumans, but fearing the formation of an uncontrollable superhuman organization coming together, new laws have been written that allow qualified superhumans to act as legalized vigilantes in a single or two-person capacity. These heroes must register with the government, and receive payment in exchange for their service.

However, the emergence of increasingly powerful villains prompts an exception. The series starts with Mr. Dead destroying an entire city, requiring multiple heroes to stop him. In the wake of this event, the heroes who defeated him are allowed to form a team. The starting group consisted of only Speedmonger, Electroshock, Rain, Jericho, and Delphi. I did have a plan to bring Silver Fox and Thundershock onto the team, and that would be full main group for the rest of the series, but such stories didn’t materialize.

The series was largely unplanned, as I wanted to take my time to figure each episode out and commit to writing a better overall story than the cartoonish plots of most previous versions or the try-hard seriousness of version 5. Characters were given more depth, there was inter-team conflict, more creative use of powers, even some of the villains were flesh out more. Unfortunately, taking so much time resulted in only four episodes being written before I ended up dropping the project completely.

THE END

CLOSING THE SERIES

I ultimately quit writing STAR Corps for three reasons:

One, I was really trying to expand my writing beyond the work I’d been tied to with Alternate-Earth Productions. New series, independent of the baggage that came before, were emerging in my mind, and I really wanted to explore these fresh starts rather than stay stuck to older projects.

Two, the burn out hit me hard. Even with an attempt to do a completely from-scratch rewrite, I was getting tired of the characters, tired of reworking the same plot points into new versions, and ultimately knew that this new version wasn’t really going to go anywhere before I found myself wanting to change things again.

Three, and this is really the most important one, is that at some point, I found myself becoming really uncomfortable with the fact that I was still using the names and likenesses of real life people for these stories. Even though most of the characters had evolved beyond just “this friend of mine with powers”, and even though I had gotten permission from every real person who appeared, it just felt wrong to keep using the characters. This article is long enough already, so I won’t go into all the details of it, but suffice to say that for personal reasons (and in hindsight, potential legal ones), I decided to decisively bring the project to a close.

LEGACY

The concepts in STAR Corps would not vanish completely, of course. Several elements would be re-adapted into later works.

The Cosmic Guardians of the Alternate-Earth Productions Multiverse really made their debuts here; Dreammaster had existed prior, but his position as a guardian and the importance of the Dream Realm saw its development here. Timeframe, Temprus, and Tempra, however, were fresh characters, and creating them is really what got me thinking in terms of consolidating the AEPM into an actually coherent whole. Ironically, despite taking place largely outside of the AEPM, the STAR Corps Universe made some of the most important contributions to its cosmology.

Further exploration of the Dream Realm was touched upon in some versions of the series, with the revelation that an actual war was taking place in the realm. This concept would be spun off into the Dream Wars, a short lived series that I wrote some episodes for a few years later. The Dream Wars themselves would be incorporated into the lore of my greater creative cosmology, implied to touch upon every universe I’ve conceived of so far.

Several of the STAR Corps hero characters would be the basis for several characters in the cast of my Elemental Keys. More specifically, the E-Key cast are re-imaginings of what the SC cast evolved into beyond their own origins. There are enough degrees of separation and further development, that I don’t consider them to be based on the real people the SC cast were themselves informed by.

The Wild Corps was a series based around the empowered animals of the STAR Corps universe. At one point, I split them off into their own story series world completely, but eventually settled them into the Nexus Universe, where they got wrapped up in the Multiversal War.

The Intrepid is in many ways a successor series to STAR Corps. The series used Power Potential as its source for superhuman abilities, Mr. Dead was a major villain figure, and at one point, alternate versions of the Wild Corps and other side characters in the SCU were re-imagined into the Intrepid Universe. Unfortunately, the Intrepid likewise followed in its predecessor’s footsteps, suffering through numerous reboots and rewrites, until it imploded into its own complete cluster fuck of failed concepts.

Even still, the concept of Power Potential stuck with me, and some of the ideas of its mechanics even found their way into my web novel Graven.

Several villains and original hero characters of the STAR Corps Universe became part of what I’ve come to call my roster of “floater characters”, characters that can be fairly easily slotted in and out of new projects. Jackie’s Lantern and Manic, for example, have featured as generic villains in several projects.

FINAL THOUGHTS

And with that, this Retrospective comes to a close. STAR Corps holds something of a special position in my history of scatter-brained creativity, being my longest running single project that actually had enough completed entries for me to consider it a success.

While the stories aren’t something I would ever off again (not without making sure to change all the names, at least), I can honestly say that for all I struggled with it, I’m rather proud of what I was able to accomplish, given my age and inexperience with writing at the time.

It was also probably one of the first projects where, despite how much influence I was obviously taking from cartoons and comics at the time, I felt I had made some a truly creative breakthroughs in some of the concepts involved. It also cannot be overstated just how much STAR Corps would influence my creative direction, to a degree I’d almost forgotten about until I wrote the Legacy section above.

It also proved to me, however, that I clearly had a lot of problems with scattered-brained-ness and lack of commitment that I failed to really address, even as I started to improve on my writing overall. It was one thing when I was making teams of characters hand over fist for the Power Universe; I was even younger then, not putting much thought into my ideas, and it made sense to me at the time to just fill a superhero universe with many teams. And yet, even when I finally did lock myself to a single team for the long haul, I never seemed satisfied to just work with what I had, and thus that, more than anything, killed the project as it buckled under the weight of constant revisions. Unfortunately, I clearly failed to learn a lesson from this, and it’s possible that allowing myself to keep making new versions of the project every few months only reinforced the bad habit.

Still, I look fondly back on this project. STAR Corps marks a substantial milestone in my creativity, from concepts to actual production to finally experiencing the thrill of having an audience, however small and short-lived. And even with all the set backs, it was an experience I’m glad to have had.