POWERNAUT 1985!

I've compared notes with Karl Scribner for this entry. He's kind of the authority for 2005, but I'm kind of the spokesman. (see "Workin' for the Powernaut")

Aside from one or two hallucinatory episodes, we do not recognize Powernauts (including Paula Power) in this story. Perhaps their famous Fractal Time has removed every Powernaut (before my famous 2005 one) from our history.

However, oddly enough, we do know of the natives of Hypergaard! We know of three of them, and what they called themselves in 2005 - before they met that year's Powernaut! They all look like guest stars in this comic strip series! They acted in the comics like what we know of them now.

• Niles was their leader. He was confined to a maneuverable chair - what we Earthlings would call a floating wheelchair. He never said what made him travel in that chair. This strip does not explain that either. However, the fan theory is that he got incapacitated in 1969 - by S.O.S.
• Linda oversaw operations. She is apparently the same Racer Girl who worked with the Powernaut in 1966.
• Wendell was youngest of them. But he was trusted with their power object, the portable Pentahedron. He wielded it also during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
• The Pentahedron deserves special mention... Karl and I do not recall any Master-Pentahedron. We am supposedly a Hyper-Child of the the Hypergaard Incident of 1969. (Yes, the same child. Don't ask.) However, we were not privy to everything which happened then. I have to rely on the classic Powernaut Comics for that stuff. I can only say, it looks right.
• When they met us earlier *this year*, Niles made stories about how he recruited Linda and Wendell from across universes. He had recruited one other that same way. Then he recruited Karl, and then Steffi Brock. None of those recruitments worked out well in the end. But Linda and Wendell stayed with him. I suppose they might have been working together a while... like *ever since 1985*.

Solarians are sentient alien constructs, designed to live inside suns. Their purpose is to snuff out the sun upon command. So naturally there is a galaxy full of them.

However, sometime in their history, at least one of them got free will. We don't know when, why, or how. But the one we're talking about, belongs to the Earth's Sun.

What do normal creatures do, when they've built a system and part of it malfunctions? They replace that part! So that could explain why two different-looking Solarians are so interested in Earth, at least in the period of history the older Powernaut comics portray.

The aliens are indeed out there. I've met them, and so has Ellipsis. But if Powernaut Comics of 1944 can be believed, the ancient Queen Zenobia met them first. She went into space - and came back healthy. The aliens *initiated* this contact; that's what they call the Species Ascension. But that doesn't mean we get to join the Galactic Senate or anything. Their "Prime Directive" for contact is not "Respect the Other Civilizations" so much as "Don't Get Caught by the Natives". Aliens sent "Spankers" to disrupt human civilization, plus "Solarians" to destroy our Sun if need be.

"Species Ascension" may put us in a galactic brotherhood, but it's one where the brothers feel free to sabotage each other. Kind of like the United Nations.

In 1985, the comic book standard was to bring all plotlines together from all of history. Powernaut Comics was no exception. Hence the call for Powernauts. Also hence the memories of 1985's Powernaut.

As has been seen since, not everything in each of these Grand Unified Theory stories has survived into the stories which followed them.

Perhaps this Racer Girl may be forgiven for dismissing the 1955 memories of the 1985 Powernaut. Admittedly they weren't relevant to her mission. But fanboys of the time dismissed them too. The fan theory at the time was, they were hallucinations from 1968.

I've mentioned that in 1985, comic books were trying to bring all history together in one story. The Powernaut's comic was no exception. But it went farther than any other. It found a comic strip from 1912, and declared that to be part of its history!

The 1985 comics never explained what this earlier Powernaut did during World War *Two*, while his son went off to war. Most fans assume, he stayed home with his elderly wife. But some say he went to war too. Some even link him to the Secret Commando. I personally doubt that... but now I wonder about the timelines and longevity of heroes in general. In 1985 this Powernaut was somewhere over 100 years old, after all. Not that that's impossible for someone in his trade...

I personally prefer not to think about generations of heroes cursed to fight wars. But for the Powernaut, the timing of his generation does at least work.

No one predicted that the Losernaut from 1948 would be brought back for this 1985 comic. But in retrospect, it was inevitable. The Losernaut comics *did* last long enough to have some overlap with the early 1960s Power Patrol, so Paula Power may have met him.

Back in 1985, some of us fanboys considered how the Losernaut might be mentally ill. With twenty years of retrospective here in 2005, we think he might have had autism *and* Down's Syndrome. That's not a thing people would have blatantly put in comics in 1948 or even 1985, of course. But Powernauts treated him like a friend and an equal, and they trusted him to make his own decisions. No commentator faults this comic on that.

Heh, it worked out awfully well to have solar-powered robots fighting the Solarians. Any Powernaut could have enhanced one of their powers enough to redirect even a Solarian's power. The Powernauts were all busy, but fortunately Manly-Man had Powernaut-level powers, which were properly directed by S.O.S.

Note how the Powernauts are each aiming their powers at each other. Five Powernauts with two arms apiece may together form the ten edges of a hyper-tetrahedron - which is to say, a Pentahedron. Most of the Powernauts (particularly the one from 1985) may have come into the situation with less than maximum power - but once they started sharing, they all had the Power.

This Powernaut 1985 comic previews a 1987 storyline with a new Powernaut. It would be shown (at least in the comics), this new Powernaut was one of the Hyper-Children of 1969. Was he really the famous actor Jeffrey Goldblatt? Given how he always wore a mask, the world may never know.

What about the rest of us Hyper-Children? We were either still getting established as young professionals (like me and Steffi Brock), or coming of age in high school. My adventures would start in another three years, and those of Stephen and Julie Wolcott just two years after that. So you could say, a new generation of heroes really was getting started. And at least for me, it was inspired by superhero comics such as the Powernaut's. I actually consider 1985 to be my year Minus One. Technically Minus Three.