The idea of “hero created in response to other heroes emerging, by people feeling threatened by said heroes” is again nothing new. However, the reason it isn’t new is because it’s timeless; it’s the classic human arms struggle (as power struggle) transposed to superheroics, which lends it a sense of immediacy, and it doesn’t have a predetermined ending. Sometimes it ends well, sometimes it ends in tragedy. That’s why it’s a deep well.
When the Legion emerged as a true force in intergalactic politics, there were of course those who felt threatened. Metahuman-level power had always been isolated, and usually culturally specific: Titanian telepathy, Braalian magnetism, Coluan intelligence, and so on. The conflux of the best and brightest from all corners of the galaxy was intimidating; many a military strategist had often wondered how a super-unit of the greatest combatants would serve the United Planets, and now that super-unit existed and was almost totally unaccountable to anybody. Every planet instantly began a new super-agent program, every last one of them in secret.
One planet had a particularly gifted biophysics researcher who thought he had cracked the secret of personal teleportation as a genetically derived superpower. They found a volunteer – an idealistic young captain, honest and compassionate and brave and extraordinarily grounded. They began preparing immediately, and readied the experimentation chamber. When the chamber blew up with the young captain inside, the government killed the program in a flash. It never happened. No evidence remained.
But soon enough, people started turning up dead. Unrelated to the experiment, understand – these were largely murderers, rapists, and the like. All of them stopped in the act. The religious spoke of an avenging angel; the secular muttered of government conspiracies. They were both, in a sense, correct.
The young captain was of course not dead. The experiment had worked perfectly;he could teleport anywhere he wanted, anytime. It was easy. He could even “look” in advance, sense where was safe to land, where he wanted to go (the scientist knew that such an ability would be necessary, lest teleportation be useless without a map of where you wanted to go, preferably with mathematical coordinates). It was flawless in every respect but one.
He couldn’t stop “looking.”
Every second of every moment of his life now, he sees people hurting, assaulting, enslaving, raping, killing other people. And he sees all of it, everywhere. For a given value of “everywhere” that’s rapidly expanding as his ability to “see” grows. Almost anybody would be driven insane by the sheer sensory overload, but the young captain was a man (or woman, actually – gender isn’t important to the character) of exceptional mental fortitude, and discovered that it was possible to retain some slight degree of sanity through action. (If the only way you could keep from going insane was by killing total bastards, what would you do?)
There isn’t an armory in the universe he can’t get into, not a criminal in the universe that’s completely safe (that’s the advantage of total surprise). He stays awake for weeks thanks to pharmacology and willpower because he can’t sleep unless he’s so exhausted that he passes out, not without seeing people violently dying right in front of him, tens of thousands at a time. (If you could stop someone you’ve never even met from being murderered, wouldn’t you feel the need to do it?) He flits across the United Planets faster and faster, never anywhere longer than twenty seconds, usually less than five.
He’s been lucky so far; hasn’t killed anybody who only appeared to be killing someone or doing something as bad. How long before his sanity gives out entirely? (What he’s going through is literally inhuman.) How long before people start blaming the wrong people for his kills? How long before he kills someone important and that fucks up interstellar politics for way more people than he can ever save? How long before some innocent guy just playing “Slaver and Property” with his girlfriend gets two in the head because the Everywhere Man didn’t have enough time to properly assess the situation before heading off to the next galaxy to kill somebody else? Can he really keep his perfect record forever?
Can they stop him?
Should they?
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You better be careful. He is reading this as we speak.
Hmm…
It’s a brilliant idea, but I don’t know how well it would mesh with your conception of the Legion-verse generally being a utopia (places like Rimbor excepted). The ethical dilemma is central to the concept, but the Legionnaires are as strongly against killing as Superman (again generally speaking– *glances at Projectra*), and with a far broader definition of what constitutes life. I don’t see the Legion treating Everywhere all that much differently from the Fatal Five. The captain might get some pity, but they’d intervene on behalf of the victims if they could and most wouldn’t think twice about whether or not Everywhere is wrong.
The United Planets should be utopian in the same sense that 21st-c Metropolis is; it’s not the actuality, it’s the overall intent. The civilized universe not only professes to give a damn about the “important things,” but indeed actually does. This does not actually translate into an honest-to-god utopia; there is still crime and violence. It’s just that most people feel bad about it and are willing to work to see that there is less of it. That’s about as close to utopian as you get without mind control.
I love it.
After all, if it really was a ‘utopia’, there wouldn’t be a need for the Legion in the first place.
It’s like taking the Punisher and giving him cosmic awareness, I approve. Actually it handles a part of Peter David’s Captain Marvel run that always bothered me: that being that I felt Genis fell into insanity a little to easily for my liking.
I got the PAD Genis-Vell vibe from it as well, and I liked it. Of course this is that idea on steroids.
I always enjoy these articles, since it shows someone with an understanding of the potential of the franchise, if the comics industry could allow itself to take more risks.
I had the same idea, and was writing it up as a sci-fi short story some years back. Except my ‘Everywhere Man’ only watched events unfold, he couldn’t do anything to prevent them. He was like a constantly teleporting Watcher, drawn to death and tragedy, but instead of an alien’s placid acceptance he had a human being’s horrified reactions and fragile sanity.
I suppose the avenging angel (or omnipresent witness) myth is fairly universal. Which, of course, means it’s terrific fodder for comic books.
There is something a little unclear here. Does s/he only see the bad things people do, or does s/he see the good things too?
If this is, indeed, an “Everywhere (Wo)Man),” then shouldn’t s/he see the positive? And, if this is a quasi-utopian galaxy, wouldn’t s/he see a hell of a lot more good than evil? Wouldn’t s/he know as much/more about a situation than either participant? If s/he always “sees,” isn’t that purely a matter of visual overload? If it is, the standard brain’s reaction is simply to filter out that which is unimportant and remember details important to the viewer. Admittedly, horrific things tend to burn themselves on the brain, but was his/her brain rendered unable to filter the details to the essential?
How does s/he deal with war?
I honestly like the idea, but these questions all appeared as I read.
The Legion Vs the Oracle of Correspondence. Amusing.
Maybe you could give him a little notebook, in which he would record his kills. Maybe he could be pursued by Braniac, using all of his prodigious intellect just to hide himself from the Everywhere Man’s self-defense.
How about we get all meta, and just call him The Reader?
And then, when the Legion finally stops him, the series gets cancelled.
What in the world are you apologizing for? That you played Mage?
This looks like a job for Superman someone with Kryptonian-equivalent senses!
Fantastic idea, both as a Legion-worthy concept and a straight superhero one. A superhuman arms race makes perfect sense, on Earth even our allies would be worried about Superman and Iron Man trucking around making unilateral decisions about good and evil. And really, the Everywhere Man idea is well-suited to answer the question of what it must be like to be somebody like Superman, who can hear bees fart in New Zealand. How can he possibly have a personal life when places like Burma exist?
A very interesting idea, reminiscent of Nexus, who sees unending visions of murderers in his dreams and is forced to resolve the situation (or die).
Ah, Nexus – my favorite futuristic space opera after the Legion.
“– I Originally Came Up With This One Over A Decade Ago While Playing “Mage: The Ascension,” And For That, I Apologize –”
MAGE! You instantly win. Ok, now I’ll read the post.
“– If this is, indeed, an “Everywhere (Wo)Man),” then shouldn’t s/he see the positive? And, if this is a quasi-utopian galaxy, wouldn’t s/he see a hell of a lot more good than evil? Wouldn’t s/he know as much/more about a situation than either participant? If s/he always “sees,” isn’t that purely a matter of visual overload? If it is, the standard brain’s reaction is simply to filter out that which is unimportant and remember details important to the viewer. Admittedly, horrific things tend to burn themselves on the brain, but was his/her brain rendered unable to filter the details to the essential? –”
He can see virtually everywhere, so even if the crime rate has been reduced to a fraction of a fraction of modern world standards, that’s still hundreds or thousands of people any given day just on one planet. I mean, clearly bad shit happens, or the Legion would be out of business from the get-go.
And I do like this idea for a character in so far as you can give him that “Who was that masked man?” appeal. Might want to scale back his powers a tad and let him linger a little longer – minutes or hours instead of seconds. If he is introduced at the beginning of his power arch, he could be a quasi-benevolent force thwarting evil before it occurs and even more efficiently than the Legion’s best. Then, as the scope of his vision expands, he’s forced to get a little more hasty and brutal raising the whole moral dilemma.
“– How does s/he deal with war? –”
Well, that would be a high note. Everyman goes batshit insane as he absorbs a holocaust from a billion perspectives at once and a vaguely benevolent guardian angel morphs into a trans dimensional socio-path more interested in making the pain stop than saving anybody.
This has miles of tread value and the potential for some really compelling writing. The only problem I have with it is it sets up the “recurring villain” / “dues ex machinae hero” a little too easily if only because there’s not a lot of places this guy can’t get to or escape from. Suddenly you’ve got a solution to a few too many problems and you risk getting silly.
Thrilling concept, though.
So, doesn’t this character already exist as Phariah? The loser witness from Crisis on Infinite Worlds. And would Tyroc be the essential hero to stop the Everywhere Man? (ooooooeeeeeoooo)
Only problem I have with the concept is the “Bendis Problem” you know, neat idea but it falls apart once applied “logically” to comic continuity. Such as the Illuminati series by Bendis. And in the Legion’s case,an Everywhere Man would have taken care of the Fatal Five a looooong time ago, or prevented Triplicate Girl’s tranformation to Duo Damsel by stopping Computo. Of course if Everywhere Man eliminated Universo I’d applaud. He became tired and overdone a long time ago. Oh well, fun food for thought none the less.
“– And in the Legion’s case,an Everywhere Man would have taken care of the Fatal Five a looooong time ago, or prevented Triplicate Girl’s tranformation to Duo Damsel by stopping Computo. –”
That all depends on where he enters the story arc. I mean, if you’re talking about a Legion reboot anyway (and most of these ideas would entail some degree of rebooting or retconning) these problems aren’t so sever.
Besides, he’s the “Everywhere Man” not necessarily the “Omnipowerful Man”. He can’t just “stop Computo” with a wave of his hand, and I imagine a Cybercerebral Overlapping Multi-Processor Universal Transceiver Operator has the ability to handle a lone teleporting superhero. It’s not like Nightcrawler or Misfit or Hiro Nakamura don’t regularly get foiled, captured, or thwarted.
To restate: the intention for everything in this series of ideas has always been to use the current “threeboot” edition of the Legion as the starting point, cheating where necessary with a time-advance by a year.
You know, just so we’re clear.
I suppose that many of us are ignoring the fact that the Everywhere Man can teleport, and can see where he teleports, but is otherwise just a trained military man.
I’m assuming that training (along with surpise) would be his only actual source of his ability to kill people.
Does he have cat eyes? And I agree, he seems a bit too powerful.
Jonathan, don’t forget fear, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
Damn it all, now I want to play Mage.
Evan, if we continue along that line, does he have a nice red uniform?
This reminds me of that movie
X, The Man With X-Ray Eyes
[…] Reason #48 Why I Should Write "Legion of Super-Heroes" "The Everywhere Man: If you can be everywhere, you can see everywhere, and there are consequences." Tags: comics, legion, superheroes, mightygodking, writing, ideas […]
I see more connections to Nexus than Capt. Marvel.