Challengers of the Unknown (New Earth)
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Contents |
History
En route by plane to appear on the radio program "Heroes", Olympic westling champion Rocky Davis, master skin diver Prof Haley, circus daredevil Red Ryan and War hero and jey pilot Ace Morgan are caught in a storm and their plane crashes. Surviving the crash the group agrees that they are living on borrowed time and that they should working togeather challenging the unknown as the Challengers of the Unknown.
After making headlines with their exploits, the Challengers are invited by the mysterious Mr. Morelian who offers them a million dollars if they succeed in opening the Pandroa's box. Taking the box out to an uninhabited island, each member tries opening the box. Unleashing and stopping such terrors as a giant stone warrior, a minature sun and a whurrling weaver, the Challengers defeat each challenge presented to them. After, Morelian appears informing them that he knew of the dangers in the box, and that he set the Challengers to unleash them so that he can get the true prize of the box: a ring of imortality. However, when Morelian tries to fly away, his plane crashes and dies, the ring having been a dud. The Challengers leave the island, wondering where their next adventure will take them.
Soon famous, the Challengers accept many "unknown challenges" from The Pentagon, mad scientists, and people with a problem. Over time the "Challs" establish the hollowed-out Challengers Mountain as headquarters. Later they adopt an hourglass logo to symbolize time running out. They encounter genies, common and sophisticated thieves, rocs, aliens and robots good and bad. Their adventures later veer toward superheroics, and take in everything from occult menaces to Bermuda Triangle mysteries. The Challengers travel through space, time, and other dimensions. They encounter the likes of the Doom Patrol, Deadman, Swamp Thing, Johnny Double, and the Sea Devils, with whom they fight the criminal group Scorpio.[1] June Robbins, a computer genius and archaeologist, joined the Challengers for many adventures as an "honorary" or "girl" Challenger.
When Red is killed,[2] a teen rock star/engineering genius immediately wages a vendetta against the three-man team. "Tino Mannaray" turns out to be Martin Ryan, Red's kid brother, who blames the team for his death. Red eventually returns; though blown up, he had been dosed with shape-changing Liquid Light and rendered amnesiac, but still nearly conquered the Pacific as a Tiki god.
As the team's challenges become more occult, Red's brother Tino is blinded. Red donates an eye to his brother and dons an eye patch. Eventually Red receives an eye transplant. Prof becomes possessed by an evil spirit and is shot by a villain. While he recovers, Corinna Stark, a mysterious blond with mystical knowledge, invites herself onto the team. The Challengers fight occult alien-monsters in backwoods villages and dark dreams, and Rocky and Red fight for Corinna's affection.
The Challs are later semi-retired, their mountain a theme park, and their adventures disregarded as cooked-up articles in a tabloid, The Tattletale. The nearby town has renamed itself Challengerville, managing to thrive on the team's name. A cosmic entity, which prides itself as "the personification of all evil", influences the entity Multi-Man to blow up the mountain. The town is destroyed. Hundreds die, including, seemingly, Prof and June. The surviving Challengers are placed on trial, but eventually freed with the testimony of Superman. They are, however, ordered to disband.
A tabloid reporter, Moffet, becomes involved with the group after several unexplained incidents. Moffet began to piece together many seemingly unrelated massacres. Red became a violent, vigilante mercenary. Ace became an addled mystic, losing new-found friends due to inattention and incompetence. Rocky became lost in a life of luxury and ended up in an insane asylum.
Eventually the three reuinted and with Moffet's aid, found a strange portal near what was once Challengerville. They discovered Prof and June, pregnant, 'alive' in a strange 'phantom zone'. The dark demon confronted them and the final battle came down to Moffet and one neutron bomb. The decision to attack was literally taken out of his hands by Multi-Man, who sacrificed himself to destroy the demon.
"The New Challengers of the Unknown", including ghostly Prof and June, were poised to take on menaces in the dark corners of the world.
Later, four new Challengers pursue X-Files-like horrors. They are Clay Brody, NASCAR driver; Brenda Ruskin, physicist; Kenn Kawa, radical games designer; and Marlon Corbet, commercial pilot, who also miraculously survived a plane crash. They stopped sacrificial wackos, drug-juiced zombies, vengeful ghosts, Amazon cults, H. P. Lovecraftian monsters, mass suicides, humming buildings, and other oddities. They were advised by Rocky Davis, older and grayer and alone. It was eventually revealed the original Challengers were dematerialized by a mad scientist's ray-weapon. The same ray caused both plane crashes, as well as others. Soon the original Challs reappeared, helped the young Challs defeat the madman, then walked back into oblivion (minus a wounded Rocky) to shut down a runaway Tesla field. The young Challengers vowed to fight on.
Superboy discovers the missing Challengers - Ace, Red, Prof, and June - in Hypertime. The team was waging guerrilla war against Black Zero (a Superboy variant). With Black Zero defeated, the team returns to Earth, but loses Red along the way. Reunited with Rocky in Metropolis, hosted by Rip Hunter, the original Challengers vow to explore Hypertime, "the greatest unknown", to find Red.
Two Challengers partake in Infinite Crisis. Rocky Davis and Prof Haley help stem the escape of prisoners from Blackgate Prison[3]. Rocky fights in the Battle of Metropolis. He is one of dozens of heroes fighting the opposing army of the Secret Society of Supervillains. The Soceity is ultimately defeated [4].
After the Infinite Crisis, the Challengers reformed partially, to man a space station and scan for a group of heroes who were lost in space. The group's subsequent adventures are unknown, but they were not seen to participate in World War III.
Paraphernalia
Equipment: None known.
Notes
- There are at least two other versions of the Challengers of the Unknown: one on Earth-21 and one on Earth-33.
Trivia
- There is a story that, on a world without superheroes, a blogger, a hip hop artist, an eco-terrorist, and two others discovers they'd been genetically enhanced and chip-programmed to be soldier-pawns by the Hegemony, a cabal of billionaires who secretly run that world. Made slaves on a Moon base, three Challengers blow up the base, escape to Earth, and declare war on the Hegemony until (like a group of obliquely mentioned earlier Challengers) their "borrowed time" runs out.
See Also
- Appearances of Challengers of the Unknown (New Earth)
- Team Gallery: Challengers of the Unknown (New Earth)
- Catalogued images featuring Challengers of the Unknown (New Earth)
Recommended Reading
Links and References
- None.
Footnotes
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