Jimmy Crockett and Miss Power

 

All great metropolitan newspapers need cub reporters. It's a comics cliche. (I was a cub editorial cartoonist once. It's not a job description, it's a state of existential angst.)

Mira had been dealing with a fellow named Power of the Press in our Champions campaign, who was a nosey-parker of the first water. Best X-ray vision around. But in a good story, the characters can't all be the most powerful. Every Green Lantern needs a Green Arrow to fill in the corners of the super-world and handle the small errands.

So I demoted PotP. Made him a cub reporter, Jimmy Crockett. He doesn't have X-ray vision, but his highschool summer job was with the Loon Lake Telephone Company. He knows phone systems pretty well, and if he lacks X-ray vision he still can lay down a mean wiretap. Only in the cause of justice, of course!

And cub reporters need cub girlfriends. Which is where Miss Power comes in. She is in the same position vis-a-vis the heroic community that Jimmy is with the newspaper world. She's heard the stories, read the magazines and newspapers, and wants some of the glamor for herself. She's in for a rough time of it. She's been a cheerleader and gymnast, and taken a bit of karate. That's just enough knowledge to be dangerous to herself and others.

Jimmy meets her around the fringes of a story, and realizes that she'd make a good human-interest series. And that she is plenty cute enough to follow around for that series. (He will be surprised to find that she's punk in her civilian identity; but by then, it's a bit too late for Jimmy.)

During a visit to the Super-Heroes' Club, she ends up talking with Mira, and goes out with her trolling for muggers. (This is a job for newcomers - who'd be fool enough to mug a recognizeable super?) Mira likes her style, and takes her on as a protege.

Before it's over she'll be taken apart and reassembled. She'll go through several costumes, pull Carnivore's claws, and end up slugging it out with Spring-Heeled Jack. And she'll have the Pelican's mask on the wall of her bedroom.

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