The cover shows a silhouette of a woman with long hair in a bodysuit, backlit by the moon as she stands atop a building. There's some hints of blue and red at the edges of her silhouette, and just enough moonlight shines through her hair to suggest it's blond. Cover copy, "Who's that girl?" ____________________________________________________________________________ .|, COHERENT An ASHistory Series --+------------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` SUPER STORIES #15 - Mixed Media Featuring Brightsword copyright 2008 by Dave Van Domelen ____________________________________________________________________________ [Answering Machine Message on the telephone of Jim Jackson, Tuesday November 17, 1994] Hey, daddy...I met with that old war buddy of yours, about the rumors our competitors were expanding into Chicago? Turns out the CEO was just in town for a retirement party for one of his dad's old associates. I decided to leave well enough alone, crashing the party would be rude, and most of these guys have been out of the business so long there's nothing I'd be able to get from schmoozing. So, anyway, I booked a flight back to SFO for Monday. Cheaper tickets if I stay over the weekend, and it'll let me do the touristy thing. ASH may not be in town anymore, but there's still lots to see, and I hear the night life's been on the upswing again lately. I might even get a chance to wear that new outfit I packed. Who knows, there might even be some clients to work here, mix a little business with pleasure. Talk to you soon, hopefully I don't just get the machine again. You really should get a cellphone, you know. They *do* make 'em sturdy enough you won't accidentally break one. Love you, daddy, bye! * * * * chi.superheroes #64271 (1 + 4 more) From: Carl_G_Winton Newsgroups: chi.superheroes,soc.superhuman.superheroes Subject: Lady Lawful new costume? Date: Fri Nov 18 06:20:53 CDT 1994 Organization: America Online Lines: 15 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think I saw Lady Lawful last nite!!!! She was jumping around hte Loop, no mistaking that bod or that blond hair. But I think she's gotten a new costume, she was in a white bodysuit with some sort of red details I couldn't make out, plus blue boots and gloves. I think she also changed her belt to red, but she was moving really fast. NE1 know if there's any pictures out there of her new outfit? ============================================================================ ___ DA BEARS RULE DA BEARS RULE DA BEARS RULE DA BEARS RULE ___ / ` DA BEARS RULE dabearsrule23@aol.com DA BEARS RULE / ` \___, DA BEARS RULE DA BEARS RULE DA BEARS RULE DA BEARS RULE \___, DA BEARS RULE DA BEARS RULE DA BEARS RULE DA BEARS RULE ============================================================================ chi.superheroes #64273 (1 + 3 more) From: ASH Fan 1 Newsgroups: chi.superheroes,soc.superhuman.superheroes Subject: Re: Lady Lawful new costume? Date: Fri Nov 18 08:23:12 CDT 1994 Organization: University of Chicago Lines: 9 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm pretty sure she's still in the red and blues, Carl. That, or she's trying out a new costume on a temp basis, since there was a sighting down on Lake Shore Drive last night, in her old outfit. I think she was spotted at about 1AM, when did you see her? Rob Evans -- I do not have a sig.file. * * * * [Chicago Sun-Times, "Super-Beat" column, November 18, 1994] BUSY NIGHT FOR LL? According to police reports, Chicago's own Lady Lawful broke up a high stakes art theft ring last night, as they were breaking into the Field Museum in search of some rare paleolithic carvings. The thieves were purely normals, although unconfirmed eyewitness comments suggest they were equipped with either low-level supertech or perhaps alien technology to help them in their work. This equipment included at least one "blaster" of unknown style, which is said to have "scorched Lady Lawful a little." Lady Lawful did not linger after giving her reports to the arresting officers, and it's possible she went home to change into an undamaged new costume, because several eyewitnesses place her at various points downtown in the early morning hours, but wearing a mostly white outfit. "She musta been really busy, though," said Javier Ibanez of Harvey. "I shouted her name and she didn't even look down." * * * * [Excerpt from Doctor Developer's Greatest Hits, volume 1: 1993-1997] A fixed camera view shows a woman in a skintight uniform held down to a concrete floor by thick wrought iron staples driven into the floor. The uniform is mostly white with a red sword insignia down the center of the torso and some red stripes on the arms and legs. Her hands are covered in leather bags, as are her feet, although a pair of blue boots and matching blue gloves can just be seen at the edge of the viewing range. A blue domino mask covers her eyes, and her long pale blond hair spreads out in a halo around her head. Connected to the bags on her extremities are slender but taut ropes, which lead off-screen. The woman starts to stir. "Uhn," she moans. Then, with slightly more coherence, "What the hell hit me?" "Good morning," a male voice can be heard. No speaker is visible on the screen. "Or good evening, I suppose. It depends on how long the stunner net's effects lasted. To be honest, I was expecting someone else...oh, and I should warn you not to move until I have a chance to explain your situation." "Who are you? Where am I?" the woman demands. However, aside from some slight straining, she heeds the warning to remain still. "If you'll look up, you'll see your own laser torch, suspended from a very sensitive latticework of threads. Each of your limbs is connected to that lattice by a rope...if you move too quickly, you'll snap one of the ropes and your own...ignited...weapon will plunge towards your heart. I've done some research on you while you were stunned, Brightsword, and I'm fairly confident that your own weapon can hurt you, maybe even kill you." Brightsword turned carefully, looking at the bonds that held her. "I was tempted to keep your weapon, actually. It looks to be normaltech, probably of alien manufacture, and that makes it particularly useful to me, since I'm a normal. Well, in a technical, Violation Physics sense of the word, anyway," he admits, a bit sheepishly. "I took enough pictures of it that I should be able to track down a copy through the Pranir markets, assuming it's alien." She starts to flex one of her hands within the leather mitten. The way it moves suggests it's been wrapped around something unyielding, to minimize range of motion. "Now, I suppose you could wait for the power cell in your sword to run out. I've rigged it to be turned on when motion detectors pick up your return to consciousness, but I don't know how long it can stay on. And I don't have hard numbers on your strength...those staples would hold my intended target, but, well...one makes do. There's a lot of information available about your predecessor from the Second Heroic Age, but you've only been active a few months, so there's not a lot of data available. There are, oddly, a lot of stories written about you online. In fact, I first heard about you when looking for, um, information about the local patriotic superheroine here in Chicago. There's a few pretty enthusiastics fans of yours online, although you might want to talk to a lawyer about some of the stories. I think the technical term for them is 'femmeslash'. Anyway, my apologies for the simplicity of this predicament, but I've only been in the Windy City for a few weeks now, and truly artistic traps require a little more time than I've had. In fact, if you hadn't all but blundered into something I was testing, you wouldn't be here." However, the apology was wasted on a room empty of anything except for smoke and twisted metal. Brightsword was gone. * * * * chi.superheroes #64291 (1 + 0 more) From: John Smith Newsgroups: chi.superheroes,soc.superhuman.superheroes Subject: Re: Lady Lawful new costume? Date: Sun Nov 20 13:47:32 EDT 1994 Organization: WebTV Lines: 27 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In case anyone's still wondering, the "white costume Lady Lawful" is actually San Francisco-based hero Brightsword, another "legacy" hero, so she's sort of like Lady Lawful. She's also superficially similar in appearance and powers, but she seems to be stronger and significantly more invulnerable than Lady Lawful, if not as fast. She's using the laser torch weapon of the original Brightsword, I couldn't say is she has any particular skill at swordplay, though. She's definitely tough enough to survive a strike from her own weapon, but a strong enough electrical jolt will still stun her. Oh, and one thing of interest to trivia buffs with an interest in dogooders. Brightsword's fingernails are as invulnerable as the rest of her, and she's sharpened at least one of them to a scalpel-like edge, then painted it over with regular nail polish so it's not immediately obvious that it's been sharpened. In a pinch, she can saw through wrought iron with that nail. I wonder how many other invulnerable female supers have thought of that trick? I think I still like Lady Lawful better, though. Brightsword's a little too...reckless for my tastes. Much like her predecessor, I suppose. He had a reputation as a bull in the china shop, and I suppose it would make sense to pass the baton (or sword) to a like-minded individual. Anyway, check out alt.binaries.superheroines, I uploaded some clear shots of Brightsword if anyone's interested. I might mirror them on the web, too, but I just moved and I don't have a reliable local ISP yet, hence the webtv.com account. -- The Doctor is out. * * * * [Answering Machine Message on the telephone of Jim Jackson, Monday November 21, 1994] Daddy, I don't think I like Chicago's nightlife. This one guy picked me up and took me back to his place, but he was into some really messed up kink, and I stormed out. I thought about going back to give him a piece of my mind once I'd cooled down a bit, but he'd cleaned out and didn't leave a forwarding address. I kinda worry about the other gals in town, I think he's stalking someone who he mistook me for, but I just gave what I knew to the cops and went back to my own hotel for a looooong shower. I don't think I really wanna get in the middle of this. Seriously, daddy...I'll take the San Francisco weirdos over this guy any day. See you tonight, can't wait to get home! Oh, and could you talk to our legal people about internet libel? My 'date' mentioned something that makes me think we need to get them looking into some things.... ============================================================================ Author's Notes: For those who aren't following ASH with a laser-like intensity, Jim Jackson is the original Brightsword. His daughter, Gloria, is leaving a message in the first scene to tell him that the lead on Darkshield in Chicago didn't pan out, while Tobias Raven was indeed in town, it was just to visit an old partner-in-crime of the original Darkshield for social purposes. Nothing illegal she could catch him on, nor any likelihood of a plot she'd have to stop. Not really important to the story, but I figured I'd let you know what was going on. The "legal people" mentioned in the last scene are DSHA's promotions office. In case you're curious, here's how Brightsword got out of Doctor Developer's trap. She deliberately dropped the sword on herself, since she knew she COULD survive the hit (her father did in CSS #5, after all, and she's at least as tough as he is). Then she sawed her left hand out of the bindings as per the sharpened nail Deedee mentioned and used it to cut the manacle enough to free her left arm (she's stronger than Lady Lawful, but not enough stronger to have simply ripped free) and used her sword to cut the remaining bonds. There really is a chi.* Usenet hierarchy, and it makes sense that it would have had a superheroes group in the ASH universe. Soc.superhuman.* is a pretty big second-level hierarchy, and by 1994 it had several third level groups under it and there was even agitation to break out a fourth level. I wonder if the inclusion of fake headers here will screw up Google Groups when it archives this post? ;) (Note added after initial posting) In case you're wondering about the other two posts in that thread, they weren't helpful (useless posts on Usenet? Shock, surprise!). One just quoted the entire original post and added "Pix plz?" The other was an anti-Lady Lawful boilerplate dropped by a well-known board troll who had a hate-on for legacy heroes. Ironically, he knew all about Brightsword II, but he didn't bother to say anything. Brightsword II had a pretty extensive, if mostly local to California, "product launch" from DSHA when she debuted (hence Unbeatable being able to get a fake Brightsword costume to modify), but people in s.s.s who knew about her generally didn't read Lady Lawful threads, the troll aside. Oh, and you'd have to be blind to mistake Brightsword for Lady Lawful. They're totally different! See? http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH/gallery/ladylawfuldvd.JPG http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH/gallery/brightsword08.JPG I'm toying with the idea of a running gag that Lady Lawful II and Brightsword II never meet, but keep crossing paths like ships in the night, occasionally getting mistaken for each other by their respective rogues' galleries. Now, a short digression that I probably should have put on the end of Derek Radner's Private Journal #5, but it's appropriate enough here. Brightsword and Lady Lawful are really the only non-military American patriotic heroes (aka "flagsuits") of the Third Age. There's also the Elite Brigade, with the Colonel (Army), Strafe IV (Air Force), Barrage (Navy) and a few others who haven't been named. The First Age is pretty much just Minuteman, with Lady Lawful I becoming sort of a flagsuit by default in the Second Age due to her background. Brightsword I was the other flagsuit of the Second Age. Outside of America, the Rechtigkeits wore the black, yellow and red of Germany's flag, and Commander Force had a Canadian flag worked into his helmet. So...why so few overtly patriotically-named Western supers? Why is Minuteman the only one with a codename even remotely in the same "namespace" as things like Captain America or Union Jack? Well, out-of-story it's because all the good names have been taken, all the okay names have been taken, and most of the crappy names have been taken. Heck, Roy Thomas singlehandedly devoured a good chunk of this namespace. Back in 1992, when I was taking my first steps at stripping Other People's Trademarks out of my ASH setting to use it in my "Avengers of Justice"/"Modern Knights" RPG setting, I wanted to make sure I wouldn't get in trouble with trademark owners, so I stripped out all of the stuff I'd "borrowed" from other sources, including most of the flagsuits. But I didn't want the setting to have *no* patriotic heroes, so I was left with two choices: I could either avoid the namespace entirely, or I could pick one of the unclaimed cruddy names and then try to explain why, in-setting, anyone would actually let themselves be called that. I don't really like the second option, to be frank. Even if you posit that Marvel and DC exist in-setting and jealously guard their trademarks, it makes no sense to not have Marvel license out a few of their properties to trustworthy supers. And with that possibility open, why would someone go by Lieutenant Justice or The Continental Congressman? So I just try to sidestep the matter by not having anyone take flagsuit-ish names of any kind, good or lame. That, of course, doesn't really answer the in-story question. If Marvel exists, why DON'T they hire some guy to be Captain America, even if it ends disastrously? If Marvel and DC don't exist, why wouldn't anyone think to call themselves Captain America or Spirit of 76 or The Patriot or the Star- Spangled Kid? While I haven't really explored it in depth, I think the answer to that is that in the ASH Universe, the idea of calling yourself something like "Captain (insert nation or city here)" was poisoned by the Ubermenschen and Bakajin, artificial superhumans of the Axis powers, who all bore names of that sort. By the time anyone thought to pick one of the more obvious patriotic names in America, the public associated bombastic flagsuit names with Nazis and Imperial Japanese...box office poison. The Soviets might have had patriotically named members of their Bogatyr, but that wouldn't necessarily make the practice any more attractive to Americans or Brits. The Second Age may have been far enough down the line to let that reason fade a bit, but then you get the whole counterculture/Vietnam backlash thing. You had a few patriotic types like Lady Lawful and Brightsword, but those looking to embody a group tended to pick non-national ideas, such as Union Label or Flower Power. As for the Third Age, the Elite Brigade's existence (starting around 1990) tended to skew perception of what flagsuiting meant, but there were still probably a lot of "crappy name" types in 1997-8 during the superhuman explosion accompanying the Godmarket. Literal flagsuits also continued to get a bad rap, with Onslaught wearing a uniform based on Khadam's flag. The Fourth Age and its supra-national polities have rendered the concept a little quaint, with government-sponsored teams tending to deliberately steer clear of flagsuit-style branding. ============================================================================ For all the back issues, plus additional background information, art, and more, go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH ! To discuss this issue or any others, either just hit "followup" to this post, or check out our Yahoo discussion group, which can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ash_stories/ ! There's also a LiveJournal interest group for ASH, check it out at http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?int=academy+of+super-heroes ============================================================================