Born in Collingwood, Ontario in 1947, Lynn Ridgway was raised in North Vancouver and attended the Vancouver School of Art. She worked at an animation studio after college but married in 1969 and moved back to Ontario, where she worked as a medical artist for several years. She drew her first book, David We’re Pregnant…
George “Digger” Harkness was born to an American soldier and an Australian woman. An illegitimate child, Harkness grew up in poverty but quickly discovered a talent for both crafting and using boomerangs. As a young man, he got a job working for a toy company, demonstrating the use of their boomerangs. When audiences ridiculed him,…
Charles McNider was a brilliant doctor and surgeon who believed in doing the right thing. He was removing a bullet from a mob witness one night when mobsters threw a grenade into the room, killing the witness and blinding McNider. McNider was recovering at home a short while later when an owl crashed through his…
Vincent T. Hamlin was born in 1900 and grew up during tumultuous times—he enlisted in the Army at age 17 and served in France during World War I. After returning home, he studied journalism and art at the University of Missouri, but was kicked out of art class because his teacher told him he was…
Jack Ryder’s parentage certainly predicted his future—his father was the publisher of a successful union dispatch, while his mother suffered paranoid schizophrenia and died in an institution while Jack was still a child. Growing up, Ryder followed in his father’s footsteps and became a television news reporter. Unfortunately, Ryder had a big mouth. Normally that…
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…
Maxwell Jensen was the classic, small-time crook before his own idiocy transformed him into something far greater. Jensen was working at a plant attached to a research center and opened one of the storage containers, thinking it might contain the company’s payrolls. Instead the biohazardous extraterrestrial materials inside transformed him, staining his skin purple and…
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….
Donna Hinckley Stacey Troy has had as many different origins as any other DC hero, but unlike the rest she currently remembers all of them. In her original origin, Donna was an orphan (her parents were killed in a fire) who had been saved by Wonder Woman and taken to Paradise Island, where the Amazons…
Born on the 4th-dimensional planet Bgztl in the 30th Century, Tinya Wazzo shared the rest of her people’s ability to phase out of reality, becoming completely intangible. Tinya decided to use those abilities to help others and sought out the Legion of Super-Heroes, becoming their fifth member as Phantom Girl. She was a Legionnaire in…
Born on the 4th-dimensional planet Bgztl in the 30th Century, Tinya Wazzo shared the rest of her people’s ability to phase out of reality, becoming completely intangible. Tinya decided to use those abilities to help others and sought out the Legion of Super-Heroes, becoming their fifth member as Phantom Girl. She was a Legionnaire in…
Born in New York’s the Bronx in 1969, Keith R.A. DeCandido was a science-fiction fan from the very start—his parents were fans of the original Star Trek, as well as classic SF/Fantasy novelists like Heinlein, Le Guin, and Tolkien. DeCandido attended Fordham University and edited the college newspaper, and after graduating he worked for several…
