The Sidekick Squad Murders
On New Year's Day, 1986, Ambrose Black, the hemokinetic serial killer supervillain better known as Viscera, murdered Cub, Sparrow, Hint Kid, Awe, and Miss Mortar (Identities Redacted) and displayed their body in a very public fashion as revenge for them putting him away three years prior. stringing them up on the statue of Paragon in Probus City Center. The fallout of this triggered the “Dark Age of Heroes” (Also known as the Bronze Age), as Lone Wolf (Lobo Cazador), Aerie (Jan Vogelhüter), Clue-Keeper (Helena Sagebrush), Shock (Identity Unknown), and The Bricklayer (Clay Martins) championed a violent vengeance quest that spiraled into a culture of fear and a cycle of revenge. The public turned against the very idea of sidekicks and the endangerment of meta-youth in a way not previously so consistently felt, a persisting sentiment among older generations to this day. The founding of Prospects Academy in ‘88 was a direct response to this, led by the Protectorate of the time and the original sidekick, Comfort.
METADATA: More details on the event that led to the sidekicks ban. In some timelines, Lone Wolf finds them in time, and saves them all, but is killed in the process. The others go back to their mentors, with Hint Kid, Awe, and Miss Mortar leaving the life shortly after, but Cub is lost to public view for years, before eventually returning as the hero known as Stray.
