Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #512: Hyperion

It occurred to me recently that, somehow, I had never gotten around to covering the various members of the Squadron Supreme.  Marvel has, over the years, done more than a few DC knock-offs.  Sometimes they’re just playful jabs.  Sometimes they actually do something with the characters.  And sometimes, they’re members of the Squadron Supreme or Sinister or something with an “S”.

Anyway, the most prominent of the Squadron is probably…Nighthawk.  But in the meantime, let’s look at the Squadron’s Superman stand-in, Hyperion.

The first Hyperion, indeed the first Squadron, appeared in The Avengers #69 by writer Roy Thomas and artist Sal Buscema.  The initial line-up, a foursome that was more or less Superman, Batman, the Flash, and the Green Lantern, were conjured up by the Grandmaster as the villainous Squadron Sinister in order to battle the Avengers.  That was in October of 1969.  Two years later, Thomas wrote about the return of the team, this time drawn by Sal’s brother John, as the Squadron Supreme, heroic beings from another Earth.

As far as Hyperion goes, he went by the name of Mark Milton.  Or maybe Zhub-Ran.  Yes, his powers and origin are basically the same as Superman, and his Squadron teammates were other DC knock-offs.  The Squadron Supreme did basically serve the same function as the Squadron Sinister.  They would pop up from time to time, usually to team up with the Avengers, but only after the obligatory fight, probably to give the Avengers the chance to smack the Justice League around.

Now, it is worth noting DC wasn’t above doing the same as there was this team called the Champions of Angor that popped up at the same time as the Squadron Supreme, mostly because Thomas was good friends with then-Justice League writer Mike Friedrich, and the two decided to have a little fun.  It’s also worth noting that just as a version of Hyperion would eventually join the Avengers that two of the Champions would end up joining the Justice League, so I think I know who I might be covering next week.

However, as far as Hyperion and the Squadron Supreme went, their status as not-quite-the-Justice-League allowed writer Mike Gruenwald to eventually write the Justice League story he knew he’d never get around to with the acclaimed Squadron Supreme mini-series, a story where the Squadron took over their Earth and revealed their secret identities to their world and became benevolent dictators with lone hold-out Nighthawk acting against them.  This seires is generally seen as the first mainstream superhero book written for mature readers, and as someone who has read it, I will say that, while the tone and ideas are mature, they were never quite what we might think of as “mature” as Gruenwald didn’t exactly throw a lot of violence, sex, and profanity into the mix.  It was the themes, not the content that was mature.

That said, there was a Marvel MAX series called Supreme Power written by J. Michael Straczyncki that did include a lot of sex, violence, and profanity.  And yes, there was a Supermanish Hyperion there.

But as for the original, benevolent Hyperion (and Gruenwald’s mini-series said he and his team were models for the Squadron Sinister), they were exiled to the Avengers universe for a period where he learned he was actually an Eternal (why not?) and eventually they got home, only for their Earth to be destroyed by an Incursion event with only Hyperion and Power Princess barely surviving it.

And speaking of Incursions, Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers run that introduced that concept brought a new Hyperion to the Avengers, the sole survivor of his universe after an incursion event.  This one was a straight-up hero who became good buddies with Thor, going with the Thunder God into a heroic last stand against an army of Beyonders that had already destroyed all the big, cosmic deities of the Marvel Universe.

Afterwards, there was another Hyperion and another Squadron Supreme.  This Squadron was some sort of genetic clones or something that Mephisto had something to do with.  They were set up as rivals for the Avengers, and eventually something happened that remade the world with the Squadron as the world’s greatest and only heroes.  For some reason, Blade was the only hero who knew the world was wrong, and he went off to find the Avengers that were somehow still there while the Squadron were both A) essentially “ugly American” stereotypes and B) using Marvel concepts to make the world more like the DC Universe.  For Hyperion, that meant he worked for a newspaper and had a photographer pal (Peter Parker), hung out with a whole legion of space-based heroes (the Shi’ar Imperial Guard), and banished his enemies to his own version of the Phantom Zone (or the Negative Zone in this case).  Blade did manage to get Thor, Captain America, Black Panther, and even a small assist from fighter pilot Carol Danvers, discovering that this Hyperion had a weakness to vibranium.

Most recently, that Hyperion, depressed that he had no world of his own, was going on a suicide run to slam into the Earth, an act that would have probably destroyed the planet, only for the Vision to realize that rather than set vibranium shrapnel around the Earth to tear Hyperion to shreds, they could just send him to another Earth where he could be that hero he wanted to be.

Anyway, that’s, like, four different Hyperions.  I’m sure there will be a fifth at some point.