The Armorines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armorines) are a group of U.S. Marines that wear armor based on bits and pieces of alien technology that has fallen into the hands of the US government. If Iron Man is good then a team of Iron Men should be even better. The armor is not as good as the X-O Manowar armor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-O_Manowar) that is the premiere armor of the aliens but is the best the U.S. government could come up with bits and pieces of alien technology.
Once again, we see a “realistic” POV towards weapons in the Valiant universe that is not present in the DC universe in particular that I mentioned in the overview of this series. Countless aliens have come and gone to Earth on DC yet the US government never tries to appropriate any alien technology and just watches these aliens come and go passively. The Marvel universe is similar but we do see in Armor Wars minseries how governments and super villains alike will try to use Iron Man’s technology.
In the, upcoming, Marvel vs. Valiant series I will have any number of armored teams to choose so but this is not the case in the DC Universe. DC is a magic centered universe with a wealth of magic based characters. Marvel is a technology centered universe were a wealth of technology based characters exist but a whole vein of this technology takes the form of the “power cosmic” that is similar to magic in that the power cosmic that is a super technology that is so fantastic and super to the point of interfering with credibility. Valiant is a logos universe were both technology and magic are rule governed and not as mysterious or unique as in DC or Marvel and the readers and characters in the universe can learn, understand and adapt. The US government can learn how to use alien technology. The Valiant universe is also a more positivistic universe than the DC or Marvel universe.
DC has a very small number of armored superheroes or super villains much less armored teams. One team is the Rocket Red Brigade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Red_Brigade) that was developed by the Soviet Union to defend the motherland from metahumans (DC speak for superhumans). The problem is the Rocket Reds are not a team so much as a brigade. The Rocket Reds never had their own series and the characters of individual Rocket Reds were never fleshed out. There is also nothing “DC” about the Rocket Reds and the Rocket Reds show up after a plethora of such teams at Marvel. The Rocket Reds could exist just as easily in the Marvel universe and in fact the Soviet Union, in the Marvel universe, developed the Crimson Dynamo and the Titanium Man as a direct challenge to Iron Man and made them into a team to defend the motherland years before the Rocket Reds showed up.
The Atomic Knights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Knight) are totally DC! Medieval armor becomes irradiated, in a post WW III world, and instead of killing the wearers due to radiation poisoning, becomes more durable. I remember reading the Atomic Knights as a young man and when you are eight you don’t question such events based on something as boring as science. The problem is that the average age of comic book readers jumped from an average of from something like 12 to 25 between the sixties and eighties and post-18 readers do bring actual science into comic book discussions. Comic books changed from being a type of fantasy with a thin patina of SF to being more SF. Star Wars vs. Star Trek is DC vs. Marvel in terms of fantasy vs. SF.
This change in readership age forced DC to retcon the Atomic Knights. DC explained the Atomic Knights as a giant hallucination! Such is the fate of heroes from a simpler comic book era in modern times. Obviously the Armorines can’t fight a hallucination and this retcon will be totally ignored and replaced by a substitution of my own.
The Atomic Knights are brought out of retirement to fight the Armorines as test in front of the US military brass. Many of the generals in the US military are skeptical of this new fangled alien technology and want to see how the new guys fare against the armored veterans that returned from a recon mission in an alternative future and fought various menaces in the present before retiring.
Hey, my retcon makes at least as much sense as the official hallucination one. The Atomic Knights are a lot older than the Armorines but incredibly the irradiated armor slows down the aging process! Hey if radioactive spider bites are good for you then why can’t irradiated armor be good for you? The Armorines blast the Atomic Knights from the sky. The Atomic Knights don’t have blasters nor can they fly but they do carry swords! In true DC fashion the Atomic Knights don’t carry 45’s since weapons monomania is a trademark of the DC universe as mentioned in the overview to this series. One of the Atomic Knights throws a sword at the energy pack of the Armorines, rather than his chest, since they are on the same side and this is just a test, and brings the Armorine down and then pummels the Armorine since it turns out irradiated medieval armor is pretty tough!
The Atomic Knights once fought Hercules before they became hallucinations and Hercules is about as strong as Superman and Superman is stronger than anything in the Valiant universe. If Herculean blows can’t destroy the Atomic Knight armor then Armorine blows stand no chance at all. One Armorine down!
The other Armorines fly out of the range of thrown swords, about five feet, and come up with a plan. They gang up on one Atomic Knight and fire all the blasters on the one Atomic Knight at the same time. The Atomic Knight goes down. The Atomic Knight armor is not damaged in the least but the person in the armor is hurled against the armor with such force that he or she is knocked out. This is similar to how the kinetic energy of a bullet breaks a rib even when the bullet does not penetrate the vest. Modern super armor would have some sort of shock absorbing layer but this is literally irradiated medieval armor with none of those new fangled systems. Actually no one has figured out how to do this in real life but this is standard pseudo science in comic books.
The Atomic Knights try throwing swords again but once you know what’s up, dodging a sword when you have flight on your side isn’t that hard. Throwing knives is really hard. I can throw a knife at someone’s chest from three to five feet with some degree of accuracy after hours and hours of practice. I tried throwing swords in my backyard a hundred years ago and it’s basically impossible. The sword throws were so wild that I started worrying about killing one of the neighbor kids and gave it up. Braveheart makes it look so easy! Still this is a comic book battle not an actual one. One by one the Atomic Knights go down.
One of the US military Brass watching the conflict wonders how the Atomic Knight armor would do in a battle with the Armorines with an upgrade. After all the Atomic Knight armor is really tough and if you add blasters and flight capability you might have something even tougher than the alien armor. Better still use the Atomic Knight armor as a core and build a layer of Armorine armor around the core. The armor would be less maneuverable than Armorine armor but suitable for environments were durability is more important than maneuverability such as deep space or deep sea missions. This is after all the Valiant universe where such thinking can occur. Stay tuned for the Atomic Armorines! Just kidding!
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Dr. Hugh Fox III 