| History |
[21 Jun 2011|07:47pm] |
When the space-pirate Despero attacked the planet Mars in the mid-nineteen-fifties, Manhunter J'onn J'onzz and his family thought that the end was finally near. As powerful as the Martians were, Despero and his pirates knew of their one secret weakness: fire. In mere moments, nearly the entirety of the Martian civilization was wiped out. J'onzz held his wife and daughter close and prepared for the end to come.
It did not. In that last moment, Doctor Saul Erdel, working under the auspices of the United States government, had reached out with his experimental teleportation device, built from the remains of a crashed Martian starship from several years prior that was found in the dessert of Roswell, New Mexico. J'onn, his wife, and daughter were imprisoned and experimented upon, but J'onn survived for years. His mental powers enabled him to feel the death of his wife, and he soon ceased to be able to sense his daughter as well.
Broken and hurt, with little left to live for, J'onn only wished for his torment to end. It did, but not in the way he had suspected. In those first few moments of his manifestation on Earth, he had unknowingly formed a psychic bond with Erdel, and the scientist could no longer bear what was being done to J'onn. He assisted him in escaping... but at the cost of his own life.
Stranded on an alien world, hunted by its government, and his own world dead, J'onn went to ground, hiding as only a Martian could.
Five years later, industrialist Marco Xaiver made the international news with his almost overnight success. Savvy investments and cutting edge technology made the man a quick fortune. A jet-setter and playboy of some repute, with a mysterious past ("Oh yes, raised here and there. Mother and Father were always away, you know how it is") and yet with a great number of people willing to swear they had known him for years, he was impossible to ignore. More importantly, he was one of the first equal opportunity hirers and an outspoken proponent of integration and the Civil Rights movement.
Xaiver died in the mid nineteen-eighties, leaving everything to his son, Marco Xaiver, Jr. A line in his will explained only that the child had been raised on the French Rivera, in order to "protect him from my enemies." Xaiver Jr. continued to champion the same kind of causes that his father had, pushed his company to even greater heights of success, all the while living a visible and flip lifestyle, while being openly critical of the government.
Now, however, the sudden appearance of super-heroes has Xaiver Jr. very worried indeed...
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