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The Return of Khepri: A Scarab Bio
by Michael Condon
1) Where was Tom Strong born and raised?
a) The Metropolis-like Millenium City.
b) The West Indian Island Attabar Teru.
c) The Smallville-like Spivey's Corner.
d) Khamdu Nala, the village at the center of Mount Everest.
2) Which statement from Supreme best describes his attitude towards his place in the world?
a) I'm just an ordinary man who was granted the gift of extraordinary power and believe that most people would try to make the world a better place if given my abilities.
b) They call me a hero. Little do they know that for all my power I am weaker than them. I protect them to get the love denied me as a child. I could force them into a glorious future. Instead I preserve the status quo from a myriad of absurd threats.
c) I'm the idol of millions. The most trusted man in the world. So eager are they to curry my favor, I may not even have to conquer them. But why deny myself the pleasure?
d) I am god!
3) Who is referred to as the ghostbreaker?
a) Mr. E.
b) Scarab.
c) Dr. Thirteen.
d) Dr. Occult.
4) Why is John Hawksmoor called the god of cities?
a) He's an amped up version of Batman who has adopted the hundred biggest cities in the world in the same way that Batman has adopted Gotham. He obsessively maintains contacts, studies the architecture and in general knows everything worth knowing about those cities.
b) He gains all of the powers and abilities of everyone within a mile radius, but only if there is at least a population density of 50,000 people per square mile. If the population density is lower he just has the skills of a highly trained CIA operative. This limits his effectiveness to large cities, and full football stadiums, and god of stadiums wasn't as catchy a title.
c) He was experimented on by aliens who replaced a lot of his body with cybernetics that give him paranormal powers within cities. Unfortunately, like Aquaman, he can't survive for too long if left out of his element.
d) He is the modern incarnation of Romulus, the founder of Rome who was deified by the Romans. He fell into a coma after Rome fell, and remained in it until the 19th century when London's population hit one million. Since then he's acted as the mystical protector of all of the world's large cities. He prefers not to fight regular street crime or even organized crime as he feels that they are processes natural to cities just as bodies have unpleasant natural processes.
5) The Sandman was trapped for seventy years by a human wizard. Who trapped him and why.
a) Mr. E because he wanted to protect all the good boys in the world from nasty dreams of painted women.
b) Roderick Burgess, a fictionalized version of Aleister Crowley, who mistook the Sandman for the personification of Death and tried to force him into providing him with power and immortality.
c) Randolph Constantine, John Constantine's grandfather. Randolph had a psychic vision in which the Sandman got into a conflict with Lucifer lord of Hell and lost, dooming all of humanity to demonic nightmares whenever they slept. Randolph trapped the sandman so as to indefinitely forestall this conflict.
d) Zatara. Zatara was well aware of the Sandman's vicious streak and considered him to be a demonic entity who had to be contained for the good of humanity.
6) Who is known as the Spirit of the 20th century?
a) Tom Strong.
b) Supreme.
c) The Doctor.
d) Jenny Sparks.
7) Which Golden Age hero had a long running Vertigo series that had him face crimes that even the grim and gritty Batman couldn't handle without having parents groups and news reports get up in arms?
a) Dr. Midnight.
b) Sandman.
c) Mr. Terrific.
d). Americomando.
8) How did Tom Strong get his powers?
a) He was rocketed from his dying homeworld in his planet's first space ship capable of interstellar flight.
b) His father injected him with a super-serum when he was an infant.
c) He was raised in a room with increased gravity and often drinks a potion made from a jungle root that retards aging and increases his vitality.
d) A mystic ceremony on his sixteenth birthday infused him with the powers of all of the members of the pantheon .
9) Whose powers are strongly influenced by her menstrual cycle?
a) Dorothy Spinner.
b) Jenny Sparks.
c) Crazy Jane.
d) Negative Woman.
10) Assuming there's an opening, how does one go about becoming a Swamp Thing?
a) One has to be set on fire and then dives into a body of water.
b) One has to be the person who's caused the most harm to life on earth. Gaea, the spirit of all life on Earth, transforms such a person, usually a horrible polluter, but a wasteful hunter or person who engages in slash and burn agriculture on a large scale may suffice, into the Swamp thing as both punishment and a means of redemption.
c) Whoever slays the current Swamp thing takes over his powers, appearance and role..
d) One must eat the Fungus of Yuggoth. It feeds on trees in certain areas of the Louisiana bayou. Some of the partakers were Native American shamans who knew what they were doing. Others were dying of starvation and couldn't resist the fungus's aroma.
11) Which character is such a heavy smoker that even his cat smokes?
a) John Constantine.
b) Dr. Occult.
c) Mr. Bones.
d) Spider Jerusalem.
12) Who is Dream's child?
a) Orpheus, the legendary Greek musician.
b) Tim Hunter.
c) Matthew the Raven.
d) Molly O'Reilly.
13) Which figure from literature plays an important role in the Books of Magic?
a) The Green Knight from the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
b) Mephistophilis the demon from Marlowe's Dr. Faustus.
c) Titania the Queen of the Fairies from Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night's Dream.
d) Barbatos a peculiarly modern demon from Kafka's Dr. Faustus 1935.
14) Who owns the Madness Vest?
a) Enitharmon the Weaver.
b) Major Flashback.
c) Spider Jerusalem.
d) Shade the Changing Man.
15) Which Superteam was form by aliens from the planet Khera in a centuries long war against the alien race the Daemonites ?
a) Gen 13.
b) Youngblood.
c) WILDC.A.T.S
d) Stormwatch.
16) What is the single most offensive image from a non-code comic?
a) When Midnighter *&^%$ the Captain America look alike with a $%^%$& $^^#@.
b) When Robotman and Negative man fought **##@&* in #$$^%$^%# with the help of %%^%&*%#.
c) When Swamp Thing rescued the young boy from the #$%$*^^%$# who were planning to ^^*(%#@%$#$.
d) When Herr Starr %%&*&* the three brothers' &$^&*&^$ in order to escape $$^&%#.
Answers
1) B. Although he serves as champion of Millenium City, it all began for him on Attabar Teru. His father felt that the island would be the perfect place for his experiments in creating superhumans.
2) D. I only have one issue of Supreme and the title character made this eye popping statement in a TV interview with his world's equivalent of Lois Lane.
3) C. Dr. Thirteen is Dc's answer to the Amazing Randi, a full-time debunker of the supernatural. Unfortunately, he's constantly running into real wizards. He's mentioned because he appeared in his own Vertigo comic that I haven't seen. He probably did something highly unpleasant that I would just as soon as not see. Speaking of unpleasant, Scarab was a Dr. fate type mystic hero who was retconned into the World war II era is a mini-series. I didn't get any farther than the rather bloody first issue. Mr. E is a rather dedicated foe of the supernatural who started his career by killing vampires amd werewolves, and wound up hunting people with magic potential because they might use their powers for evil in the future.
4) C. He has one of the stranger set of powers that I've ever seen. He received them from aliens, and is a cyborg, but the powers seem more mystical than scientific. He can travel between cities, (Not quite a teleport as it takes an hour, but I don't think he's moving through space conventionally either.), does not need to eat or sleep, can use windows to see what happened in a room in the past, can tell where horrible crimes have taken place within a city and has caused Paris to eat an invading army. And this is what I've seen in a few of his appearances, he probably has many weird powers.
.
5) B.
6) D. She was the first superhero on her Earth and had adventures that resembled the predominant comic book or its equivalent throughout the twentieth century. Her adventures resembled those of Buck Rogers in the 20's, Superman in the 30's, the brutal crime comics in the late 40's, Marvel's team the Avengers in the 60's and Watchmen in the late 80's. She died at the end of the twentieth century and was reincarnated as the hyper-powerful infant Jenny Quantum. Tom Strong is a century old Superhero who resembles the 30's Superman. Supreme is an arrogant Superman-like character. The Doctor is the mystic member of the Authority.
7) B.
8) C.
9) A. Dorothy Spinner strongly resembled a monkey and had the power tto summon strange images from her brain. These images usually had powers and wills of their own although they tended to do what she wanted them to do. At certain times of the month the images are more powerful, less likely to listen to her and more likely to appear. Jenny Sparks had electrical powers. Crazy Jane suffered from multiple personality disorder and each personality had a different set of powers. Negative Woman could release an energy being from her body that could move at the speed of light, stretch and give off destructive energy by touch for a minute at a time.
10) A. One of the more painful methods of getting super powers. A friend of mine who works in a burn ward does not recommend jumping into any bodies of freshwater as this greatly increases the risk of infection. Remember, stop, drop and roll. The Fungi of Yuggoth appeared in a H.P. Lovecraft story. Yuggoth is the name the natives gave to the planet Pluto.
11) D. Not only does Spider Jerusalem own a smoking cat, it is a two-headed smoking cat. Spider Jerusalem is an abrasive journalist and star of the comic book Transmetropolitan. I'm not sure if Dr. Occult smokes.
12) A. Matthew the Raven is Sandman's servant not son. Tim Hunter is a boy who has the potential to be Earth's greatest sorceror. Molly O'Reilly is his ex-girlfriend and protector of the Realm of Faerie.
13) C. Barbatos does appear in the Books of Magic, in fact, the blue baby is one of the book's major villains, but Kafka did not write Dr. Faustus 1935, except maybe in his dreams. (Lucien the Librarian is a Sandman character whose library contains all of the books written in Dreams but never placed on paper.)
14) D. Enitharmon first appeared as a god-like being in one of William Blake's poems. He appeared as an alien wizard in Marvel's Strange tales where he repaired Dr. Strange's Cloak of Levitation. Major Flashback was a member of the hippie hero group known as the Justice Experience.
15) C. Stormwatch also fought Daemonites, but they were formed by the united nations to deal with threats appropriate for a meta-human team, not just alien invasions. I'm not too sure about the origins of the other two teams.
16) ^%&*^*
Mike Condon, Fanzing's trivia quiz guru, is a librarian who lives in Brooklyn.
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