A Brief History of The Pantheon
Three of the four members of The Pantheon were drawn together by the threat of the undead Vampire lord know as Thomas P. Prest.
Prest was a little different from most typical Vampires you've read about or perhaps even encountered. Neither a blood-crazed beast nor an evil manipulative creature bent on the enslavement of mankind, Thomas Prest just…was.
Oh, sure, he'd been down those paths before but, after a few centuries that sort of stuff gets boring. In fact, after a millenium or so, just about everything gets boring.
That's why, with the advent of meta-human adventurers known as "super heroes", Thomas Prest's spirit lit up like a child on Christmas morning. Finally, here was a challenge up to Prest's interest. Prest began travelling the world setting up elaborate tests for Superheroes in cities and countries all over the world. Usually, these tests involved intellectual challenges for the heroes and rarely resulted in physical confrontations between the heroes and Prest himself.
A man of honour, Prest would allow his test subjects go after his little "games" were over and they would be released…often a little bruised and embarrassed but never seriously injured. Only if the heroes refused to let it end there and would pursue Prest would Prest be forced to eliminate the heroes. And usually he would do so quite quickly and efficiently.
When Thomas Prest came to New York City, Prest and his agents caused disturbances throughout the city, leaving clues to lead any conscientious heroes back to his base of operations, The Prest Travelling Circus.
Luring in four independent Super Heroes (Midnight, Cosmic Ranger, The Incredible Speck and Comet), Prest put the heroes through their paces as they successfully navigated their way through his gauntlet of tests, traps and malicious tricks.
Realizing that they worked together well as a team, the four heroes unofficially banded together on several more occasions to battle the forces of evil and darkness.
On a solo mission for the organization know as S.A.V.E., Comet was killed by beings with supernatural powers and the remaining three heroes were shocked to hear of his untimely death.
They were even more shocked several weeks later when comet's 'ghost' started appearing throughout the city, apparently taking extreme vengeance upon those villains who took his life.
Using his amazing powers of investigation, observation and deduction, Midnight was able to track down this "Ghost Of comet" who turned out to be his twin brother who possessed the same incredible speed powers that comet had. The only way that Midnight was able to stop Comet II's lethal form of vengeance was to band the other three heroes together and, accompanying Comet II on his crusade they managed to successfully subdue the villains before Comet II could enact his lethal vengeance.
Shown the error of his ways, Comet II agreed to use less extreme methods in the future as he announced his intent to carry on his brother's work against the forces of villainy and darkness.
Not long after this, Comet II called upon the other three heroes once again to assist him in investigating a particularly malevolent haunting which had already resulted in several deaths.
Further joined in this endeavor by The Short Cute Funny Furry Purple Mutant Alien Animal From Outer Space, the four heroes investigated this "haunted house" only to discover the true meaning of terror. Encountering vengeful spirits, Hellhounds, and creatures of unspeakable horror, The Short Cute Funny Furry Purple Mutant Alien Animal From Outer Space was slain and the four remaining heroes became trapped in the spirit world with no way home.
Eventually seeking advice from a talking crow and encountering a shadowy cloaked figure who lead them back to the Prime Material Plane, the four heroes found themselves once again in the "real world". Unfortunately, the world they found themselves on was not their own world.
The heroes found themselves in a parallel dimension called Vine where magic had superceded science and cultural development was on par with that of some medieval era gone by. It was in this world that the group first became known as "The Great God Speck and His Pantheon" (this was later shortened to just "The Pantheon").
Discovering that villains from their own world were importing technology to upset the balance of power on Vine and were trying to set themselves up as the true power behind puppet rulers that they would control.
In thwarting the villains' plans, The Pantheon underwent many changes.
As "Mondo-Speck", standing a half-mile high, Speck almost single handedly destroyed the Alien infestation and saved the world of Vine from the creatures.
Failing in their attempt to use the villains' technology to return to Earth, they set out upon a quest to find the tomb of the greatest of all of Vine's Wizards, the Great Altroune. Finding the tomb of Altroune, the heroes were granted a boon and were returned to Earth.
Unfortunately, Earth was not quite the same as they had left it. Returning to a world where super-heroes and most references to "heroes" in general did not exist, The Pantheon further discovered that they, personally, had never been born in this alternate Earth.
Seeking a way to return to "their Earth", The Pantheon used their amazing abilities to subsidize a new technological industry based upon the reverse engineering of the advanced technology found in Speck's mass-altering weight belt.
Bursting upon the scene battling crime wherever they found it, the heroes then cashed in on their newfound fame.
As a journalist and author, Midnight began writing novels on The Pantheon in his secret identity of Ralph Daystrom.
Unable to have a secret identity due to his obvious physical abnormalities, Cosmic Wolf began a comic company based upon the adventures of The Pantheon as a whole and the adventures of the various individual members of The Pantheon.
Using his incredible good looks and musical talents, Comet II cashed in on the pop-culture of the times, Comet II bypassed the whole secret identity gig and adopted a new persona that embodied several elements that were popular at the time. And thus was born The Australian Ninja: Superhero, Movie Star, Rock and Roll Legend, and idol of millions.
Maintaining a more low-key approach, Speck utilized his own Gordian thought processes to construct an elaborate series of dummy corporations and electronic paper trails to funnel all funds to the creation of Multi-Tech. A multi-national conglomerate dedicated to the betterment of the human species through the rapid advancement of all known technologies.
Through the work of Multi-Tech's various divisions of CyberTech, BioTech and ChemTech, the heroes hoped to raise human technology to a level where they could send themselves home.
During this time, the heroes gained many allies in their battles against Evil. It was during this time that they encountered Sebastien Tracer, the alien scientist known as Techno, the metallic techno-organic warrior known as Heavy Metal, and rescued the head of Aluminium Plus from the confines of a Netherwoldly prison.
It was also during this time that The Pantheon discovered that they would never be able to go home as this world was their home.
Encountering the once-villainous Doctor Apocalypse from their own native world, they were shocked to discover that their home world had become overrun by demonic forces and the resulting battle for conquest of the Earth had caused irreparable damage to the space/time continuum.
The Elder Of The Universe had no choice but to restart that particular branch of the space/time stream to repair the damage. As The Pantheon were not part of the space/time continuum when the restart occurred, they were conspicuously missing from the matrix and, therefore, were never reborn in the "new world".
Even more shocking was the fact that Doctor Apocalypse had managed to convince The Elder Of The Universe that this "new world" needed a keeper to prevent the same sequence of events from happening all over again. At the time Apocalypse thought that if he could convince The elder that he was best suited for the job, he would gain ultimate power.
He was right. Unfortunately, Apocalypse had never heard the expression "Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it."
Apocalypse was, truly, all-powerful but, after millions of years of guiding the space/time continuum through a safe and orderly stream of existence, he found that he was incredibly bored and depressed to the point of being suicidal.
Unfortunately, he found that he could not take his own life and nothing in "his" universe was capable of harming him. With the arrival of The Pantheon, beings not of his universe, he saw his opportunity to finally achieve that which had been denied him for so many millenia.
Tricking The Pantheon into killing him, Apocalypse revealed all of this to them with his dying breath. He then bequeathed to them his power and responsibility as keeper of the universe.
Not wanting the job, nor trusting themselves to do a very good job of it, The Pantheon did the one thing that Apocalypse's enormous ego could never let him do…they gave the job to someone else.
The only act that they used their omnipotent power to perform was to create "the ultimate wisdom" to safely handle the power and responsibility of being "keeper" of the universe.
As The Pantheon themselves have put it: They know for certain that there is a God…because they created him."
Resigned to their fate as premiere super heroes in this brave new world, The Pantheon began to settle into their new roles with a newfound confidence and pride.
It was not long after this, however, that things began falling apart.
But all is not lost, Pantheon fans, as rumors have it that at some time in the far-flung future, The Pantheon are once again reunited to battle for forces of Darkness, Evil and Oppression and to liberate our world from those who would pervert our precious planet to their own nefarious schemes.