The Comet

The Comet first appeared in Toronto on August 22, 1970, and was registered as a Delta Class variant, on par with Shtorm, Stryker and other national heroes. Comet was a patriot and a hero, and quickly gained ties with the Canadian government (but not before he underwent basic RCMP training—the Canadians are very particular about the image of their police forces, and were not about to hand police powers over to a novice). More than anyone else, Comet was Superman from comic book mythology. He was kind, generous, just, courageous, trusted by the government, loved by the people, and unconnected with business or political interest. He was a man of peace, a man of reason and a man of conscience, and when all else failed a man of action, with minimum necessary force applied to resolve problems. This contrasted sharply with the other "National" heroes of the time (or even of today), who had close ties with their nation's armies, political and social agendas, business interests and questionable morals. The Comet was above that. He was all variants could aspire towards.
    He was able to maintain this degree of independence in part due to the nature of Canadian society, and in part from his own personal fortune; in his "secret identity" as Robert Green (which was known to the Canadian government but kept from the press), he had inherited hundreds of millions from his father in the form of the Green Consortium, a major investment and holding company. Green paid little attention to the day-to-day affairs of the Consortium, having inherited it shortly before he gained his powers. Both happened in his 23rd year, and followed the untimely death of his parents in a plane crash. When he did get involved, it was to improve the philanthropic work of the Consortium.
    Comet's powers were based on the absorption, manipulation and generation of light, which provided among other things the flight and enhanced strength nearly ubiquitous to Delta class variants. By the end of his career he had a casual lift of over a ton, with just slightly subsonic flight and the ability to generate light in lased or unlased forms, as well as pulsed photon beams that exerted a degree of physical force on the target. He once produced sufficient light to counteract a blackout in the entire city of Quebec, and could melt holes in solid steel with a glance.
    On January 9, 1979, tragedy struck. Comet was engaged with an unidentified robotic menace above Montreal and apparently mis-timed or drastically miscalculated the effect of one of his blows. The robot was sent hurtling across the sky, plowing through the wing and fuel tanks of a passenger 747. The plane had lost contact with the tower and hadn't heard the commands to reroute away from the scene of the aerial battle, instead getting too close. The 747, USAir flight 115, lost the entire port wing, followed immediately by the explosion of the fuel tanks. Comet flew into the conflagration, attempting to salvage the plane and rescue the passengers, but managed to grab only three before he was forced from the spiraling wreckage by smoke, heat and the necessity to stop the lost wing before it clashed onto the crowded rush hour highway. The main body of the plane went down in a field, where the impact killed three, in addition to the 247 on the plane. Of the three Comet pulled from the plane, one young girl, Lillian Beauber, died in his arms. The other two barely survived.
    The tragedy rocked Canada, the world, and most desperately, the Comet. The RCMP moved with blinding speed to capture the creator of the robot, Quentin Wellesly AKA Hephaestus, a "criminal mastermind" whose creations had battled Comet and some American super-teams in the past. Wellesly denied that the robot was his and pled innocent. He was found guilty of a multitude of crimes and sentenced to life in prison without parole, a sentence he is still serving.
    Unfortunately, the true damage had been done. The Comet retired, devastated by the deaths and his complicity in them. This was noticed through the rest of the world, but was inconceivable to Canada. Everyone expected his eventual return, his eventual reclamation of his mantle of Hero. Their hopes dwindled bit by bit, year by year. The Green Consortium lost more and more of its philanthropist tendencies as Robert Green sunk further into depression and alcoholism. In April 1984 Robert returned to his position on the board, on the surface renewed and ready to do good in some form again, but his philanthropic dreams died on the drawing board when depression gripped him again, and he committed suicide in his home just recently.
    Reported initially only as the death of a once prominent businessman, the tabloid Northern Exposure revealed the connection between Green and the Comet. The effect was a bombshell on the Canadian community, equivalent to the feelings of mass grief suffered by Americans on the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle. A monument was quickly erected by the Canadian Government, and his state funeral was attended by variants of various nations. Still, the glory of his life was tarnished by his death. Conspiracy theories abound about the nature of his death and premature retirement, but none have any solid evidence, just innuendo fueled by the belief that their greatest of heroes couldn't have fallen so far.

| Top |