Intro to Dearth

There was this planet. It was called Dearth. A
bunch of people lived on it. They were mostly
actors, but gave themselves silly names like
accountant and lawyer and politician. Some were
wonderful people, like nurses and rangers and Mother
Theresa. The biggest problem with Dearth People was
that most of them didn’t have anything to do. It went
like this: “Okay, we’re here, the universe is here,
erm…….., now what?”
A group of people decided to do something about it and
so gleefully gave themselves names like, scientist and
priest and philosopher. However, they soon noticed
that it did not make the original problem go away, but
by then it didn’t matter, as they’d found various
other pre-occupations. Eventually giving up on these
people, the rest of the folk said, “Screw you, and who
cares what it’s about? We can find our own things to
do!” and went on to invent things like politics and
war and gossip and television and advertising to keep
themselves busy. All in all, Dearth was, for a long while, a pretty
busy place, filled with pretty busy people. They did pretty busy
things like building cities and fighting wars
and…well, whatever it was that they wanted to. And
Dearth spun its merry course through the spaces
between the places around it.
Now, the most amazing thing about Dearth people was that they each had really fantastic and totally unique super
powers. Most of them weren’t ever aware of it, as they
were generally too preoccupied with talking and
fighting, and fighting and talking to have time to
think about such things.
Anyways, this is a story about a few particular
superheroes who lived on Dearth, Doomsday, the
Doldrum, Astroman and Plutosh, and some amazing things
that happened to them. Let’s begin with the Doldrum.
Idiosynchracies aside, the Doldrum, a multi-talented
somewhat self-aware superhero, was someone who was in
most people’s good books. Some thought him a scientist, others thought him a little crazy, but most would agree they liked him. He didn’t let all that get to him though. He was the Doldrum and so he just dolled on and did his thing. His was the power of rational perception. He could look at something,
figure out what he was looking at and understand it.
He couldn’t quite turn it on all the time, but he was
getting there.
Astroman was a graduate of the E.S.S.L., the Elitest
Superhero School of Life. There he had blossomed into
a superathleticallactionslickandsilverprettygorgeousgoodguy superhero. Upon graduation, he’d proclaimed himself,
“Astroman, Defender of Dearth”, perhaps the most
depressing thing he’s done as he soon found out that
noone was attacking Dearth, noone would want to
anyway, and noone even knew if anyone lived anywhere
outside Dearth. Little did he know that the woman he
was in love with and protector to was in fact an
incarnation of the Green Glowing Golden Goddess Gaia
herself, who was trying out the human experience just
to figure out what exactly was up with all these cute
little greedy things who keep stepping on her.
In this instance she was Doomsday, the coolest chick
on the planet. More neurotic than the 90s, more giving
than Santa, bitchier than a cat guarding her cubs and
more attractive in her coolness than a tall cool glass
of coke on a hot afternoon, she owed her name to these
looks she’d learnt to direct at things. She had always
known that she could do almost anything with those
looks if she could figure out the right one to use at
the right time. She was really good at just that.
Finally we have Plutosh, the errant philosopher. He
was capable of doing only the smartest or the dumbest
things. This was because he had a really good intuitive feel for the true nature of things, but mostly it was all just too much for him. Self aware, he managed to stay sane by keeping himself almost always slightly drunk.
The Doldrum and Plutosh spent most of their Saturday
nights at Doomsday’s apartment, where she lived with
Astroman. However our story does not start there.
It starts………