JLA: Age of Wonder

At the 1876 Centennial Exposition, the super-powered Clark Kent made his public debut by delivering the first piece of the Statue of Liberty. Offering his services to help America into a dawning age of wonder, he came to work closely with Thomas Edison before breaking away with Nikolai Tesla and Lex Luthor. When Kent learned of his true homeworld, he and his colleagues were inspired to use what they could learn from the space craft that brought him to earth: Theodore Knight, for instance, designed his “gravity staff” and became the Starman. A test of his lightning-charged staff ricocheted, striking chemist Barry Allen and turning him into the Human Flash.

All the wonders came with a price, of course: the social strife of an industrial revolution, the temptation of power. After tricking Earth’s first Green Lantern into exiling Kent into space in 1896, Luthor began a campaign to develop weapons of mass destruction, then arm both sides in the brewing conflict in Europe. Tensions broke into war, a war that escalated to atomic weapons and Tesla’s ultimate death ray, and that dragged the League of Science into open conflict.

Text by Kelson Vibber. Do not copy without permission.