LNH20/Meta: the silver and bronze ages

Andrew Perron pwerdna at gmail.com
Fri Dec 2 10:45:27 PST 2011


On Dec 2, 4:56 am, Lalo Martins <lalo.mart... at gmail.com> wrote:

> 1959: The first proper computer network is demonstrated. Inspired by the
> concept, the premier heroes of the US East Coast, West Coast, Great
> Britain, France, and Japan get together for mutual support, creating the
> second-ever supergroup, The Network. Soon a few more heroes join.

Interesting!  Both the "inspired by science" and "model UN" aspects of
it are very suited to the time period.

(As a side note, in another universe I'm (ever so slowly) creating,
the main good-guy-team is also called the Network.  I find this
appropriate, rather than redundant.)

>       The Network deals primarily with:
>       - Monsters
>       - Mad scientists
>       - Organized crime
>       - Supernatural and extradimensional threats

Don't forget aliens!

>       - Global pan-terrorist organizations, mainly WHATEVER

We have to get in some of the Inevitable Offshoots, too.

> 1962: The Network investigates stories about a town that seems to
> occasionally pop up in various places in the US. They find the town, and
> its resident hero, Google.mesh, locked in a ages-spanning battle with the
> tyrant ApocaLISP. The (somewhat jaded) residents call it only The Village.

Oooooooooh.  Good combination of references.

>       The Network puts a lot of effort into giving the town an
> infrastructure that would allow it to be a nearly-normal part of the
> world, including a wireless connection to the telephone system that would
> later be the inspiration for cell phones.

Ah, nice.  I was wondering if we should define Netropolis's position,
but this is better.

> In the end, they spent so much
> time there, that they decide to just stay and make the place their
> primary base of operations (they didn't have one before this, meeting on
> individual members' secret lairs). The town votes to rename itself
> Net.town in their honor.

I'm imagining this kicking off a wave of renaming.  Some of it would
later be undone, but the citizens would remember, so it wouldn't be
uncommon in the modern day to see people refer to the same place as
Houston, Housto.net, and, say, Bayou City.

> 1963: Four members of the Network decide to retire from public-eye
> heroing, and instead focus on their work as explorers of the
> extraordinary. They join with an unrelated group of four explorers. In
> the team's very first adventure, an unrelated bystander gains powers and
> joins the group, which will become known as the Net.astic Nine.

Ahhhhhh, so it's like a combination of the two Kirby teams.

> 1964: The Network is so popular, that by this time powered individuals
> are generally known as net.heroes and net.villains, or net.men in
> general. (In the 70s, feminism would replace net.men with net.human. In
> the present, a growing movement wants to replace even that with
> net.persons, Tori being one of their poster children.)

Honestly, I see "net.human" as more of an indicator of "human with
powers", including villains and those not active in adventuring,
rather than "superhero".  I could see some pundit calling them "New
Humans", and the term getting conflated with net.men (which itself
would later become net.hero).

> 1969: America is divided into a hippie-friendly, anti-war side, and a
> strongly nationalistic, pro-war, anti-communist side.

I'm imagining a version of one of those sitcom episodes where
roommates divide an apartment straight down the middle.  The hippies
get the side with the bathroom, which is just a lead-in to a joke
about not showering.  Ratings plummet.

>       Secretly, Y.O.N.D.E.R. is a joint initiative of the military,
> intelligence, FBI, and a few key private interests; most of its members
> are either pre-existing, usually experienced military/intelligence
> net.agents, or manufactured specifically for the group.

I'd say that it's publically associated with but independent from the
military, that the military thinks they're in control of it, that the
CIA and the FBI both think *they're* in control of it, and that the
private interests are in it deeper than anyone suspects, possibly
including themselves.  The members would be split evenly between those
who are military but don't know any of the other secrets, those who
are in the employ of some other interest, and those who signed up
thinking the public facade was the truth.

Ironically, one of the private interests is the organization of a
retired net.hero, whose goal is to push society towards more ethical
and less corrupt behavior.  The second-in-command of the team is the
only member who knows this organization even exists.

> 1985: The Network finally disbands, on the same meeting that Kid
> Enthusiastic had gone to planning to apply to join the team.

Oho.  Now this I can work with...

> (The
> attentive reader will spot that this takes Crisis on Infinite Earths as
> the landmark for the end of the bronze age.)

Naturally!

> 1992: Net.humans, mostly ones that choose not to use their powers as
> heroes or villains, begin dying mysteriously around the world, but most
> noticeably in Net.ropolis. A disparate group of net.heroes and maybe one
> or two until-then-villains join together to investigate, and decide to
> remain a group, as the Saviors of the Net.

Aha!  A good origin; appropriate and different.

> 2002: The Killfile.

I think I would've put this a bit earlier, both to give the world more
time to adapt to it as the status quo and to reflect the beginning of
the Modern Age (whose beginning is disputed, but whose latest possible
beginning date has gotta be October 2000, with UItimate Spider-Man
#1).

> 2002: Net.ropolis becomes Netropolis.
>
> 2007: End of the Killfile.
>
> 2007: Formation of the LNH.

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, we're binding the Hungry Past by
constructing a past before the stories are even posted.


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