Thursday WHO’S WHO: Northwind

“Hey, we need to create another character for the “Justice Society 2″ project.”
“Okay… so we got two kids Green Lantern had, Hawkman’s son, Wonder Woman’s daughter, and the Atom’s grand-nephew or something like that. Who else can we throw in?”
“Maybe the Flash has a kid?”
“Nah, I don’t like it. Dr. Mid-Nite?”
“Blindness isn’t heriditary. Doesn’t make sense. Hourman?”
“What, a kid who takes the same pill? We want superheroes here. We’ll save that idea for if we ever get desperate.”
“Well, that knocks out a lot of them. I mean, the JSA were a lot of guys who barely had powers if at all, right?”
“Yeah. Maybe Hawkman could have another kid?”
“What, another one? We already did the Egyptian thing with the first one.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t have wings. How about we give him a kid with wings?”
“Why would one kid have wings and the other kid doesn’t have wings? Come on.”
“Okay, okay, I get your point, but I think a winged superhero has the look to round out the team.”
“I don’t disagree, but how does he have wings? Hawkman’s wings aren’t hereditary either.”
“…maybe he’s not Hawkman’s son.”
“But that’s the whole point of this series. It’s the next generation of Earth-2 superheroes.”
“Maybe he’s… his… godson?”
“I’d say that’s weak, but we already got the Atom’s grand-nephew in this, and really he’s only an honorary grand-nephew at that.”
“Okay, godson then. But how does he get wings?”
“He takes a pair of Hawkman’s old wings. It’s not rocket science.”
“Come on, we can do better than that. I’m thinking that he’s actually a bird-man.”
“What?”
“A bird-man.”
“Like Koko B. Ware?”
“No, I mean a bird-man hybrid. A man-bird, if you prefer.”
“So, like, a guy with a bird-head and wings and talons.”
“No, that’s a little too freaky. I’m thinking just the wings. Maybe he can have some feathers in place of hair or something.”
“And this is Hawkman’s godson.”
“Yeah. Uh… a friend of his married a bird-woman.”
“A bird-woman.”
“From a race of bird-people.”
“This is one sexual deviant we are talking about here.”
“No, they mostly look human. But they’re evolved from birds, like we evolved from apes.”
“So he’s only slightly kinky.”
“Shut up.”
“Does he call her Beaky?”
“The point is that they had a kid.”
“And he’s from the race of bird-people. Which live where?”
“…a hidden secret city?”
“I can work with that. Where’s it hidden?”
“How about the Arctic?”
“You know what I think of when I think of the Arctic? Birds.”
“Well, that’s exactly why they’re hiding there, wiseass. Because nobody would think to look for bird-people in the Arctic.”
“I guess they probably had a hidden city in temperate zones first, but people kept coming up to it and saying “gosh, a hidden city of bird-people! It was right where I expected it would be!””
“Anyway. So we’re good on the origin, then?”
“Yeah, why not. Does he have any powers other than flying?”
“Does he need any?”
“Well, you’ve got one person who flies and can shoot energy blasts, and one person who flies and is basically a living Green Lantern ring. Doesn’t that make Kid Bird-Man kind of redundant?”
“This is a superhero team. There’s always room for a person who only flies and nothing else.”
“Fair enough. But I bet someday that somebody’s gonna take this guy and go full-on freaky-looking bird-man with him.”
“Might as well guess that he’ll get turned into a zombie or something.”
“That’ll be the day.”

• Share on Facebook.
• Share on Twitter.