Author: Aaron Rosenberg

Born in 1948, David Michelinie loved comic books from early on and knew he wanted to write them. So he took a chance, and in the early 1970s he moved to New York to work for DC Comics.

He started out writing backup stories on House of Mystery and House of Secrets, then wrote seven issues of Swamp Thing. In 1978, he switched over to Marvel and immediately began writing The Avengers. From there he moved to Iron Man, Amazing Spider-Man, and Star Wars.

Michelinie was responsible for introducing both Jim Rhodes and Tony Stark’s alcoholism during his run on Iron Man, but he is perhaps best known for the supervillain he created and introduced in Amazing Spider-Man: Venom.

Since then, he has worked on Action Comics, Rai, H.A.R.D. Corps, Captain Fear, The Bozz Chronicles, and many others.

Most members of the Legion of Super-Heroes have the same powers as the rest of their people, but some are unique. Condo Arlik was one of the latter. The people on Phlon had no innate powers, but Condo was born with the ability to alter the speed of chemical reactions, causing them to happen as quickly or as slowly as he wants.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t control his power, and so from birth Condo was isolated to protect others. He was also taught chemistry right away, in an attempt to help him gain control. Even so, it was not until Lyle Norg (Invisible Kid) stepped in that Condo, by then a teenager, was able to interact normally with others.

With Lyle’s help Condo learned to finally control his powers, and he immediately applied to and was accepted into the Legion Academy.

Condo, known now as Chemical King, was an excellent student and while still there, was asked to infiltrate the Legion of Super-Villains, since as a trainee he was unknown to them. He and his classmate Timber Wolf were successful in their mission and afterward graduated to full Legionnaire status. Sadly, Chemical King became depressed after Lyle died, and a short while later Condo sacrificed himself to prevent World War VII. A commemorative statue of him stands in the Legion’s Hall of Dead Legionnaires.

Pieter Anton Cross started his association with superheroes while still in the womb—his pregnant mother was attacked one night in their native Norway by vagrants one night but was rescued by the original Dr. Mid-Nite.

The incident caused her to go into labor, and the superhero delivered Pieter before dashing off into the night. Pieter grew up to become a brilliant doctor, graduating Harvard at nineteen, and moved back to Norway for a time before returning to America to work with Charles McNider—who, unbeknownst to Pieter, was the same Dr. Mid-Nite who had saved him at birth!

Unfortunately, years later Pieter ran afoul of the evil Praeda Industries while investigating a mysterious drug A39 that they were marketing. The druglords captured him, drugged him with that same chemical, and put him behind the wheel of a car. When Pieter awoke he discovered that he had accidentally killed a woman, and that he was now blind but could see in the dark. To bring the druglords to justice he took the identity of his favorite superhero, becoming the second Dr. Mid-Nite.

Since then, Pieter has joined the JSA and become one of its guiding members, as well as its resident doctor.

Born in Elkhart, Indiana in 1955, Jerry Scott initially went into advertising. He got his start in comics by submitting gag strips to magazines in the mid-1970s—and sold one of his first ones to the Saturday Evening Post.

In 1983, he was asked to take over the Nancy comic strip, which he worked on for the next twelve years. In 1990 Scott and longtime friend Rick Kirkman created a new strip, Baby Blues. In 1997, Scott and Jim Borgman collaborated to produce Zits. Both Baby Blues and Zits are still running, and combined appear in over 2000 newspapers around the world.

Zits won the National Cartoonists Society prize for best newspaper comic strip in 1998 and 1999—Baby Blues won the award in 1997. In 2002 Scott received the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

Born in Mount Vernon, NY in 1956, Phil Foglio moved to Hartsdale, NY, while still a young boy and lived there until he went off to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago when he was only 17.

While at school, Foglio worked on the science-fiction club’s fanzine, Effen Essef, and was nominated for two Hugo Awards for it in 1976—in 1977 and 1978 he won the Hugos for Best Fan Artist. In 1980 Foglio started a comic strip What’s New with Phil & Dixie for Dragon Magazine. It ran for three years.

He moved back to New York shortly thereafter but soon returned to Chicago. There he illustrated Robert Lynn Asprin’s MythAdventures series and turned the first book into an eight-issue comic book series from WaRP Graphics. From there Foglio got work with DC (Angel and the Ape, Plastic Man, and Stanley and His Monster), Eclipse (Fusion, Dreamery), First Comics (Munden’s Bar and Dynamo Joe), and others. He illustrated many card games, magazines, and books, created the character of Buck Godot for Imagine It and went on to create several Buck Godot graphic novels as well.

In the 1990s, Foglio brought What’s New back, this time for Duelist Magazine. He also created the series Girl Genius with his wife Kaja. In 2005 Girl Genius moved online as a free webcomic.

Sure, everyone knows that Billy Batson, Mary Batson, and Freddy Freeman could say their magic words and transform into Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Captain Marvel, Jr., three of the World’s Mightiest Mortals, also known as the Shazam family.

Yet in their regular lives, they were mere children, and often needed a protector and mentor. They found him in the guise of their uncle Dudley, who was actually not related to any of them. Very little is known about Dudley before he joined the Shazam family. He may have been a failed stage magician and a confidence artist at some point, and he had been married but was since divorced.

Dudley discovered the Marvels’ secret by happening across Mary’s Good Deed Ledger and returned it to her, claiming to be her long lost uncle. He also claimed to have magic powers of his own and wore a Marvel costume he had made himself—when Mary transformed Dudley stripped off his regular clothes to reveal the costume and become Uncle Marvel. He established a business, Shazam Incorporated, to channel money from the Marvels’ deeds into charitable organizations, though he did pocket a little of the money for himself.

The Marvels quickly found out about his scheme, and that he was not related to them and didn’t actually have any powers. But they liked Dudley, who was otherwise a good person, and so they allowed him to maintain the charade. Dudley explained his lack of powers after that by saying he had lost them due to a bad case of “shazambago.”

Despite having no powers Dudley could often trick opponents into defeating themselves, and he did provide a caring paternal figure for the three young orphans.