Legacies

I am a huge history geek.

That shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you, really. Consider that my current position is as a graduate student. I'm so into history that I actually went back to school so I could study it.

My specialty is Japanese history, but I also love Chinese history and American history and British history. And Ancient Rome. And the Aztecs and the Mayans. But if I had my choice -- if I could really study any history I wanted -- I would study the history of the DC Universe.

Knowing that, you can imagine how much I enjoyed DC Universe Legacies #1. It's one of those books that seems to have been tailor made for me. It's got anything and everything a person like me could want out of a comic. History's grandeur. The birth of the super-hero. The awed eyes of those watching it happen.

I think this sense of history is what draws me to DC Comics more than anything else. That may also be part of the reason why I don't have much of an interest in Marvel Comics. Now, I'm not denying that Marvel Comics has some serious history. No on can doubt the importance of Golden Age characters like Captain America and Namor.

But most of Marvel's popular characters had their genesis not in the 1930's and 40's but in the 60's. There is almost fifty years of history there for most of them... But the big problem is that -- with a few exceptions -- there isn't really a sense of legacy in Marvel Comics. I don't get the feeling that there is a heroic tradition handed down from one generation to the next.

Now I maybe be wrong about that... But it doesn't really matter, does it? All I know is that DC does have those legacies. It may have begun with Superman and the Crimson Avenger, but it continued with Sandman, the Atom, Green Lantern, and others. And despite some of DC's recent decisions, I feel that the sense of legacy continues.

With every generation new heroes take up the cape and the mask. A young Paul Lincoln asked why they would put on masks and fight crime. Is it not self-evident? There was a need. And when such a need arises and all feels lost, there are always those men and women who will step forward. That's what Legacies is. It's the story of that tradition and the answer to the question. It's history.

The Terror of the Golden Age

Who was the first supervillain?

The superhero genre has existed since the 1930's. It's not difficult to determine who the first superhero was -- that was Superman. Extrapolating from that, it would seem clear that the first supervillain has to be the first "super" opponent of the Man of Steel. But that would not be Lex Luthor, as some might assume. Indeed, the first true supervillainous opponent of Superman was the Ultra-Humanite.

The Ultra-Humanite was conceived as the ultimate opposite of Superman. A brilliant scientist with a crippled body, he was physically weak, but mentally powerful. His motives were murky, but agenda was not: he wanted to conquer the world. That certainly puts him squarely in the supervillain category. But if that was all the Ultra-Humanite had ever been, he would probably have faded away into obscurity.

But the Ultra-Humanite didn't just fade away. Even when he was given up for dead and his body destroyed, he returned. And in this, the Ultra-Humanite became another "first." He -- a pronoun used for convenience -- became the first transgendered character in comic books.

When the Ultra-Humanite's body was destroyed his brain was transferred into the only readily available body -- that of Hollywood starlet Dolores Winters. And so -- in a twist that could be modestly described as revolutionary for the 1930's -- the Ultra-Humanite shed his crippled male body for a youthful female one. And it would not be the last time the Ultra-Humanite would discard an old physical form for a new one.

Over the years the Ultra-Humanite took up numerous bodies. His most well-known -- and seemingly preferred body -- was that of an albino gorilla. For it is in that form that the Ultra-Humanite gained the physical strength he craved to augment his superior intellect.

Over the years the Ultra-Humanite has been a foe of every generation of the Justice Society of America. But the Ultra-Humanite seemed to finally be destroyed after the events of the Stealing Thunder arc in JSA. But recent events in Justice League of America prove that that assumption to be woefully incorrect.

It is not the first time that the Ultra-Humanite has been wrongfully presumed dead. Nor will it be the last. The Ultra-Humanite, it seems, cannot die. He is intellect embodied. Most human beings -- be they male or female or something else all together -- are defined by their physical bodies. But such things mean nothing to the Ultra-Humanite.

In this, the Ultra-Humanite represents something deeply disturbing and profoundly terrifying. He is a being stripped of true identity. And without that identity, there is nothing holding him back -- nothing keeping him in check. He is not bound by name, blood, gender, or species. He is not bound by law, society, or morality.

The Ultra-Humanite is no one. He is a non-entity of vast evil intellect with nothing to lose. He was the true terror of the Golden Age. And he haunts us still.