Champions: One Earth (Storylines 01)

I'd indicated that I'd be tying the storyline to initial appearances of heroes in comics, but as all comics continuity buffs know, there's just too many storylines and stories out there that contradict, retcon, and change the current continuity to make it easy to do a straight history in either timeline (Marvel, DC) without doing some pruning and editing.

My approach: lock down some tentpole characters and storylines and move forward (and backward) from there. Of course, since I'm looking at what my players are interested in as well, I have to ask them which storylines they remember and enjoyed -- then I try to find a way to make it have happened in the skeleton timeline that I have.

Ignoring the multi-versal, time-twisting events in both universes, here are a few storylines that I'm weaving into the history, based on my own interests -- we'll get to the players' interests and favorite storylines and arcs later:

Batman: Court of Owls

The existence of the Court of Owls dovetails nicely into the Earth 2 opposite number of Batman being Owlman. But even better, it sets up Gotham as a place of secrets -- some that even the World's Greatest Detective is unable to find until it's almost too late.

While Gotham may be their home base, a decades-old conspiracy of wealthy families that have surely spun their webs of influence throughout the world. Also, they have likely spent their wealth of techniques and tactics that placed them in the blind spot of Batman, making for an almost bottomless source of conspricay - crime families that would give John Wick's assassin-rich culture a run for its money.

Speaking of assassins, the Talons are a great recurring foil for some of the more agent / espionage members of the Knight Watch Red team -- regenerating, semi-undead foes that are relentless and backed by as much money as the other wealthy crimefighters in the world.

Lastly, it sets up some great mystery that the descendants of the Bat would wrestle with -- Dick Grayson? The half-brothers each known as Jason Todd (same father, different mothers)? Helena Wayne?

Invasion!

The idea of the Dominators managing to pull together an alliance of alien races to invade Earth -- in order to eliminate the threat of metahumanity (mutants, mutates, and peak humanity speciments) not only thrusts the awareness of alien races into the public consciousness, it also sets up several useful setting threads:

• aliens are real and humanity knows it;
• aliens see Earth and humanity as both a threat and an opportunity in their complex plans for peace, war, isolation, and conquest;
• alien technology scraps and fragments were left behind and reverse engineered by humanity -- and while manufacturing  capabilities and raw materials vary between worlds, the science behind the technology has led to breakthroughs in many fields;
• some alien races came to Earth's defense once they found out about the invasion (including some already living among us for their own purposes).

I'll be avoiding the worldwide effects of the gene bomb that occurs in Book Three, but I'll allow for limited exposure to these in certain areas. After all, this gene bomb could be the basis for the Big Bang that took place in Milestone Comics' Paris Island.

[ NEXT UP: The Mutant Nation of Krakoa, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents ]