Prohibition Era Heroes

The years just after the first world war marked the appearance of the first 'costumed adventurers'—people society saw as larger than life heroes and villains, and whose exploits were covered in the pulp magazines as much as they were in the news media.

Captain Tomorrow
Thomas Morrow was an officer in the Great War, highly decorated and tagged for rapid promotion through the army's ranks. Instead he left the service, retiring to his family's land in Maine to pursue his esoteric scientific researches. He was interrupted one night by an apparent meteor strike outside his home. When he investigated he discovered that it was not a meteor at all, but what he took to be an extraterrestrial contact—a desiccated humanoid wrapped in futuristic armor. Flexing his mighty thews (no really, he had mighty thews! Everyone said so!) Morrow dragged the figure into his house and began investigating it. Within a week his peerless intellect had unraveled the basic functions of the suit, including its ability to store advanced technology in 'aetherspace,' a function that provided Morrow with not just the armor but a veritable arsenal and storehouse of advanced technology.
    Knowing that this was more than he could properly investigate on his own, he telegraphed the members of his old army unit: Hastings, the expert pilot; Kruger, his medic, now a renowned surgeon; Lavalle, the scrounger and now lawyer; Rimes, the crack marksman; Monk, the brawler; Raye, the seaman and engineer; and Williams, world traveler and ladies man. The seven men all responded to Morrow's summons, and all were astounded by what he revealed. Kruger performed a qiuick autopsy on the figure, learning that no matter how starange his condition, he was not an alien, but definitely human—and judging from the chemical residue in the mans lungs, possibly a human from the future!
    Morrow then revealed his second reason for calling these men together. With this new technology at their disposal, they could protect the world from itself. All of them had lived through the horrors of the war. None wanted to see such a thing happen again. Morrow was a genius, expert fighter and born leader, and he took the helm of this group of former soldiers and turned them into a force of heroes to rival any army in the world! He was Captain Tom Morrow, and the future boys! Of course, it helped that they were outfitted with equipment from what Morrow assumed had to be centuries in the future, things that even his great intellect could only partially decipher. (Modern Variant Historians believe that it was actually the time travelling criminal Mobius at the end of his life, his peculiar condition caused by the events of Captain Tomorrow's first encounter with the now aged and infirm variant villain. It is a trick of fate that Tomorrow, outfitted with Mobius' future technology, became the villain's first and last great adversary.)
    Captain Tomorrow and his agents operated for fifteen years, from 1919 to 1934. Finally he retired, passing the mantle on to the new breed of costumed adventures arriving in the 30's. At least, that's the assumption—several heroes from the 30's speak of meeting with Captain Tomorrow in 1934, in which he informed them of his decision to retire. Then he and his surviving agents stepped into a device of his own design, which folded in on itself and vanished. The final resting place, if any of Captain Tomorrow, is unknown.

Stingray
Sheila Mariner was the daughter of Horace Mariner, sailor, cultural anthropologist and Sinophile. Her childhood was spent travelling the world, being dragged from Asian ports to American colleges to European lecture tours. She had to learn all Chinese dialects her father encountered, eat strange foods, and take classes in meditation, judo and kung fu. All she wanted was a normal life. When she turned 18 she forced her father to give her some of her inheritance up front and fled to the east coast, trying to life a normal American life. She settled down and married a coast guard officer named Charlie Raye. Handsome, kind, gentle Charlie. For three years she lived the normal life she had always wanted.
    That was shattered in 1920, when Charlie, kind gentle Charlie, was killed by rumrunners. Sheila was devastated, and then driven to the edges of anger when Charlie's superiors did nothing, being too busy taking bribes from the smugglers to get involved. A girl with an ordinary childhood wouldn't have taken it any further than complaining to the coast guard brass. Sheila found one of the rumrunners and beat him senseless, dragged him out on her boat and threatened to throw him overboard if he didn't talk. She then used his information to attack the next shipment. In doing so she ran into Captain Tomorrow doing the same thing—Sheila's cousin Mike Raye was one of the future boys, out to avenge his brother's death.
    Captain Tomorrow and his agents were impressed with Sheila's abilities and offered her a position, which she refused; she wasn't interested in saving the world, she wanted to get the men who had killed Charlie, and all those like them. Tomorrow understood, and provided her with a futuristic battlesuit. Lightweight and bullet resistant, it had a minor exoskeleton that increased her strength, water filtration systems for underwater survival, and a system for delivering vicious electrical shocks either on touch or along fired harpoons. The mobs were already calling her a Stingray for her vicious fighting style, so this just took things a step further.
    Stingray operated solo and with Captain Tomorrow until the mid 30's, when she abruptly disappeared. Dead? Retired? Since her identity was not known until recently, when JT Mariner found documents revealing his aunt's activities, these remain questions without answers.

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