Appearing in "Burning the Candle at Both Ends"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Gideon Spunctry (First Appearance) (appears in both flashback and main story)
- Simon Tsung
Antagonists:
- William Keefhus
Other Characters:
- John
Locations:
- Wildstorm Universe
- United States of America
- San Francisco, California
- Florida
- Florida Keys
- United States of America
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for "Burning the Candle at Both Ends"
Caitlin, Bobby, and Grunge hack their way through jungle in search of Roxy and Sarah. They come across an old house and a giant, unconscious toddler. Meanwhile, the property owner of the cabins Gen 13 is renting assumes they were destroyed in the hurricane and gives Lynch the keys to two intact cabins. Lynch then apologizes to Alex for attacking him. The giant toddler wakes up and, after a brief skirmish, identifies himself as Dr. Gideon Spunctry. He takes the team to his lab inside the house and explains how he developed a gene therapy to reverse aging and experimented on himself. His gigantism is a side effect. He can reverse the process with his equipment but requires a heat source. In San Francisco, Simon Tsung is approached on the street by Tindalos henchman Keefhus. Gen 13 helps Spunctry with his equipment, using Burnout’s powers for energy, but it overloads, blowing up the house. Bobby flies Caitlin and Grunge to safety, and Spunctry emerges from the rubble confident that the reversal process worked. He thanks the team for their help and sees them off. Sifting through the debris of the team’s cabins, Alex finds Roxy’s diary and learns where she and Sarah went.
Appearing in "Nuclear Spring"
Featured Characters:
- Planetary (First Appearance)
- Drummer (First Appearance)
- Elijah Snow (First Appearance)
- Jakita Wagner (First Appearance)
Supporting Characters:
- David Paine (First Appearance) (corpse) (appears in both flashback and main story)
Antagonists:
- U.S. military (appears in both flashback and main story)
- unnamed general
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for "Nuclear Spring"
At an underground U.S. military base, a general and his guards enter his office to find three superhumans waiting for them. They introduce themselves as Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner, and Drummer, a group of archaeologists collectively known as Planetary, and they want to know what happened to scientist David Paine in 1962. The general explains that Paine had developed a new theory of physics and was using it building a new kind of bomb for the U.S. military. On the day of the bomb test, the general’s wife went onto the test site to find Paine, and Paine went after her. He saved her but was caught in the bomb blast himself and mutated into a superhuman monster. After battling Paine for weeks, the military captured and imprisoned him in a shaft five miles deep under the base without food and water until he died in 1983.
Notes
- "Nuclear Spring" was published as a preview story for the Planetary series. The story was simultaneously published in C-23 #6 and later reprinted in:
- Planetary: All Over the World and Other Stories trade paperback (2000);
- The Planetary Omnibus hardcover (2014);
- Planetary Book One trade paperback (2017).
Trivia
- The character of David Paine in "Nuclear Spring" is an analogue of Bruce Banner a.k.a. the Hulk from Marvel Comics.