#macrocosm comics

One year and some quiet acquisitions later, three boroughs of NYC hosted a network of telephone hotlines used regularly by the city’s new colorful team of public servants: the Heraldic Society of America, or simply the Heralds! With Operator Maxim coordinating their efforts and delivering dramatic retellings over the airwaves, the roaring ‘20s saw the start of the Golden Age of the Superhero!

Spring has sprung on this Women's History Month, and to celebrate, Macrocosm Comics presents one of its most innovative heroes: Miss Fission! Brought into the world in the border city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Kirana Patel's first memories were created in Chicago, Illinois, where her family immigrated to escape Taliban extremism. Now settled in the US, Kirana's mind had the opportunity to develop in safety, and she rapidly absorbed knowledge and became fluent in four languages by age six. In the third grade, Kirana was attacked randomly by a handful of her classmates who tore off the hijab she'd been wearing for Ramadan. Following this trauma, she renounced Islam and wouldn't touch so much as a scarf again until she started college. For the next decade, Kirana's lifestyle change and rebellious streak put her at constant odds with her parents and her teachers despite her promising intellect, and would often sleep over with the few true friends she made in school. Before her Freshman year classes began at Malcolm X College, Kirana—and three friends she made during orientation—visited an antiques store in downtown Chicago one evening (while under the influence of "college experimentation") and purchased an old tome written in Arabic. By studying its thousand-year-old pages, Kirana discovered it contained the instructions for over one hundred magical rituals, including those that pertained to the ancient Greek philosophy of Atomism. Her friends, having bought similar antiques, found their purchases were also of an arcane nature! Unable to return the artifacts—as the antiques store had mysteriously disappeared—Kirana and her friends resolved to learn how to use their newfound powers. Within the year, Miss Fission and the Windy City Wonders made the headlines of newspapers across Chicago—for better or worse...

As you can see, I've been cooking this one for a very long time... the more I lived and learned about what it means to be a human being in the 21st century, the richer and more robust the character of Sapien became. I can't wait to publish Macrocosm Comics Instant Classics No. 1 in its entirety and share my brainchild with you all, my dear viewereadership!

The youngest member of the Valor Corps, El Águila Azul, The Blue Eagle, is freedom incarnate. As a boy in his hometown of La Paz, Mexico, Justino Calderón was a passionate fan of lucha libre, and as far back as he could remember, he always wished to fly free like his favorite luchadores--Mil Mascaras, Eddie Guerrero, and Rey Mysterio. Despite the pressure put on him to provide for his family by any means necessary, Justino refused to walk the same lifepath as his cartel gangster father. During this turbulent time in his adolescence, Justino found himself enamored with the American Dream, which became the Desperate American Escape when he discovered his mother—the only source of familial support Justino had in La Paz—dead by his father's bloodied hands. For two agonizing weeks, with scant food and water supplanted by an indefatigable will to live, 14-year-old Justino hiked north along Baja California towards the US border, and by nothing short of divine intervention, crossed unharmed. The next night, in a slumber deeper and more relaxed than ever he had before, Libertas—the Roman goddess of Liberty—visited him in his dream and, in recognition of his unbreakable spirit, blessed him with a fraction of her power. Justino awoke the next morning, clad in the suit of his self-styled luchador persona, and possessed of a metaphysical power to liberate himself and others of their trappings, burdens, and shackles, thus making manifest Justino’s childhood dream: El Águila Azul! Among the Valor Corps, Águila Azul is something of a wild card. With the scope of his powers not easily categorized beyond the ability "to liberate," and his obvious youth, Justino's teammates insist he finish high school and pursue his professional wrestling career, calling on him only when a problem or threat arises that the inhibition and complexity of adulthood can't solve... but that doesn't stop El Águila Azul from sneaking in a midnight crimefighting exploit every now and then!

The fourth of the initial membership of the Valor Corps, Roadrunner is, by his own description, "the fastest and loosest" member of the team. Quick to act and "run his mouth," he also employs great restraint so as to not cause excessive harm with his extraordinary abilities. Grant Marks' childhood hero was Jesse Owens, so he always tried to emulate the Olympic Gold Medal sprinter. However, such was no easy task with his Sickle Cell Anemia. Not his medical treatments, not his U.S. Marines training, nothing in the conventional world could alleviate his condition. Discharged dishonorably from military service and at the lowest point of his life, Grant was recruited by Mr. Fahrenheit to be a courier for the Pearlgate Club. Unbeknownst to him or the wider public, the Club was a front for the Order of the Eldritch Oyster, a fanatical cult with millennia-old apocalyptic designs and an unhealthy obsession with destroying magical artifacts. To test his loyalty, Grant was sent to seek out and destroy the Boots of Icarus. In legend, the gleaming orichalcum sabatons were forged by Daedalus and blessed by Hermes to give the wearer superhuman speed, agility, durability, stamina, and control over elemental air--but were lost along with the laboratory of their creation when the fabled inventor was forced to flee the isle of Crete with his son. Regardless, Grant finally had a means of living his childhood dream, and the cult would see it killed. Upon finding the artifact, Grant did not destroy it as ordered. He instead put them on and fled, running thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean to return home. With some invaluable family advice, and to honor the nation he once served, Grant burned his bridges with the Pearlgate Club, donned a costume with the Boots of Icarus, and began fighting crime as Roadrunner! More than a few people who approach Roadrunner have asked him, "why green? Are you trying to look like Hustle the Hamster?" To which he would answer with something to the tune of, "Last I checked, SAGA doesn't own the copyright on the color green!"

Dorothy Kwan wasn't born an Arbiter of the Cosmic Balance, but she was thrust into the role by the unfathomable workings of the universe. Graced with a brilliant mind that earned her a PhD at age 18 and led her to work in a nuclear fusion reactor in the year 2000, Dorothy was bombarded with dark matter and dark energy during a disaster which forced the facility to shut down. Miraculously, she and several others were preserved by the strange energies at play then. Now endowed with the power of opposing universal forces, Dorothy goes by Dr. Cynosure as homage to the miracle of joined opposites she came to embody. Standing by her Socratic Oath, she uses her science for the betterment of humankind. As part of the Valor Corps, she serves as her team's heavy hitter, blaster, and tank, while also lending her scientific mind to matters of extranormal physics.