Celebrand
Dartalg
Elvo
Immorto
Orintho
Psyche
Quantum Queen
Dartalon
Evlar
Re-Animage
Aviax
Psyche
Quantum Queen
Wanderers The Wandrers were a team of adventurers and heroes that were
famous throughout the universe for several years prior to the formation of the
Legion of Super-Heroes. The team consisted of seven people, about whom little is
known: Celebrand, their leader, who had no super-powers, but had a brilliant
tactical mind and expertise with a raygun, Ornitho, who could turn himself into
avian forms of all sorts and could fly, Elvo, a nimble master swordsman, Dartalg,
a crack shot with a blowgun who carried specially-treated darts for all occasions,
Immorto, who could never be killed due to his body's ability to heal itself almost
instantly, Psyche, the Mistress of Emotions, and Quantum Queen, who could turn
herself into any form of quantum radiation. In 2979, several years after the
Legion rose to fame, a United Planets publicist came up with the idea of the new
heroes meeting the old ones, and he arranged a meeting between the two teams,
which was extremely amicable. But after leaving the meeting, they accidentally
flew through the Nefar Nebula, which contained psychoactive radiation that caused
them to turn evil, and they stole the legendary Seven Stones of Alactos. The
Legion hunted them down, engaging in a sort of contest to determine who was the
strongest Legionnaire, and eventually, they figured out what had happened to
their friends (Adventure Comics # 375). The two groups once again parted as
friends, and the Wanderers have been invited to the Legion's happy events, such
as the wedding of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel (Superboy (1st series) # 200), and
called in to help in emergencies, such as the Daxamite invasion of Weber's World
during the Great Darkness (Legion of Super-Heroes (1st series) # 294).
The Wanderers disappeared for several years without a trace. Even a special team sent
by the Legion (Legion of Super-Heroes (2nd series) # 42) were unable to find them.
They had been murdered... by creatures born of a
Controller named Clonus and his cloned human wife, Velissa. The cloning process,
as it turned out was deeply flawed, and any creatures born of a being created
through it eventually turned into murderous monsters which savagely enslaved
entire worlds' populations, a problem the Wanderers had been trying to investigate
when they were killed by those very creatures. Clonus tried to make amends for
this by cloning the Wanderers (except for Celebrand, who had been too far gone),
manipulating their genes so that their powers would be more effective. When they
woke up, Clonus (actually a clone of him) explained to them what had happened and
four of them decided to take new names to reflect their increased powers. Dartalg,
who was changed into an almost monstrous form, with quills coming out of his body
and out of his hand like talons instead of his simply using them as weapons, was
given the name Dartalon. Elvo, who now owned a power-sword that fired emotion-triggered
blasts became the Elvar. Immorto, who now had the power to heal and revive other
people called himself Re-Animage, and Ornitho decided he liked the name Aviax better.
Together, they searched for their killers, aided by Clonus, whose body (both his
prime body and his clone body) was killed by a Controller hunting him (because
to them, cloning was a crime against universal nature due to the monsters it
created...something Clonus had not known), but whose mind survived in their
ship's computer. Through a coded data-pyramid that Clonus's prime body left behind,
they traced the creatures to a world on the galaxy's rim which was inhabited by
reptillian bipeds. There they met several Legionnaires, who acquainted themselveves
with the new Wanderers and helped them eradicate the clone-creatures from that
planet (Wanderers # 3. The two teams then parted ways once again, with the Wanderers
searching for, and eventually finding, the children of Clonus who killed them on
a planetoid in the Naranga system. The Controller hunter, who had been possessed
by one of these creatures, explained to Clonus and the Wanderers why the Controllers
had forbidden cloning. With the help of another of the creatures (which Psyche
later named Squink after the sound it made), who had formed a mental bond with
Psyche and forsook its fellows for it, they finally tracked down the source of
the creatures, who had formed a hive-mind with Clonus's wife, Velissa, who they
had been keeping alive. The original creatures, the children of Clonus and Velissa,
had been sent to a children's home to be raised while Clonus and Velissa continued
their scientific work, and had kidnaped Velissa when they turned into monsters,
feeding off her emotions and making her their queen. The monsters procreated by
expelling crystal "eggs" from their foreheads, and thereby created an army with
which to find other worlds that would join their group mind. Velissa originally
wished to destroy Clonus, blaming him for her torment, but eventually she realized
that Clonus still loved her, and that her true desire was to go to her eternal
rest and stop her monster children from destroying all other life in the galaxy.
She provoked Dartalon into expressing his hatred of Clonus for making him a monster,
and the creatures picked up on this destructive emotion and severed their mental
link with Velissa, killing her and causing a cave-in on the planetoid they were
on, killing creatures (Wanderers # 1-5).
The Wanderers then headed for the nearest United Planets outpost, which happened
to be Shakarta, and applied to become official U. P. agents, earning the job by
busting up a ring of smugglers / terrorists (Wanderers # 6). In recognition of
their good deeds, the United Planets appointed them as official peace-keeping agents,
and they carried out some tasks for the U. P., who assigned them a woman named
Ahrane as their Contact (Wanderers # 7). They attempted to set up a home base on
Psyche's home planet, but this attempt ended in tragedy, as Psyche's parents, Korda
and Shalleen, didn't recognize their daughter in her new, cloned body, and instead
accused her of being their daughter's murderer. They called the police, who sent
robotic Stalker robots against Psyche, who fled from them and let her emotions run
wild, summoning anyone in the vicinity to her side, including her childhood
acquaintances Darda and Shan and several other Wanderers. When she realized what
she was doing, she withdrew her emotion and fled again, but she needed to feed
off emotion and was in danger of dying. She went to the nearest human setllement,
her parents' house, where she finally convinced them she was their daughter just
as the Stalkers arrived. Her parents were killed for trying to stop the Stalkers,
and Psyche, whose identity was later confirmed and was named heir to the estate
she intended the team to use as a home base, no longer felt at home there
(Wanderers # 8-9).
After a few months of missions and wandering, the Wanderers were given the mission
of saving the birds, or proto-birds, on Planet W-23. While there, they encountered
a race of alien beings who, they came to believe, were responsible for the evolution
and extinction of species on many planets, possibly by splicing their genes into
those of native species. The Wanderers further theorized that they themselves might
be these creatures' descendants, and their powers might have come from whatever
parts of their genetic heritage these creatures were responsible for. At the end
of this final mission (during which Elvar finally figured out what was wrong with
previous attempts to clone Celebrand, and finally began a clone of Celebrand which
should, logically, grow properly), the Wanderers flew through a space warp created
by a black box given them by the aliens (Wanderers # 12-13), and were never seen
again... maybe. Leland McCauley IV was, until mid-2995, in possession of a large
collection of beings held in stasis through the power of an Emerald Eye
and two of them, curiously, resembled Elvo and Dartalg in their pre-death state.
What these are and how he got them is a mystery (Legion of Super-Heroes (3rd series)
# 39, Legionnaires # 4).
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