River City History: The final stand against Yankee Doodle Jones

With the insanity of Yankee Doodle Jones now an institution even as World War II neared its conclusion in the European theatre. With police thinned by the fighting overseas, they didn’t stand a chance against the massive super-powered being more powerful than any mortal. Heroes of comparable power existed—but most were also too busy aiding the war effort to lend a hand.

The Midwest city found itself alone against a power it could not hope to control. Jones declared himself emperor and set out to systematically destroy anyone that opposed him. The police and city government saw no choice but to bow to his whim when it was clear no one would aid them in their plight.

The other heroes of the city took up the call. The Dragon would gather Echo, the Enchanted Dagger and California-based hero Barry Kuda to join him in his fight against the insane created man. Kuda was a mysterious underwater hero only in the area by chance. But when The Dragon looked for heroes, the undersea adventurer answered the call.

Everything came to a head on October 14, 1944. The four heroes confronted Yankee Doodle Jones face to face…and the battle would rock the city to its core.

In his mad quest to take total control of the city, Jones now ruled from city hall, flying off to destroy anyone or anything he might see as a threat. As night fell, the combined might of the heroes made their move.

The details of the battle can only be pieced together in hindsight. The heroes succeeded in ending the life of the artificial man, but Echo and the Enchanted Dagger were both killed in the conflict. The Dragon disappeared from the city, his whereabouts to this day still unknown. Barry Kuda returned to California after the victory, but refused to speak of that night for the rest of his life.

The Dragon left Yankee Doodle Jones’s body little more than a burning corpse, his components melting away. Only dental records were capable of identifying the former hero. River City was free of his rule, but now stood with a broken government, a police force in shambles and no super powered protector to help its through the post-war transition.

River City History: The Echo

The detective known as Echo was really a professional ventriloquist named James Carson. Carson and his wife Cora were a pair of traveling showmen, but they regularly worked and performed in River City.

Jim Carson was many things, but never was he a man that lived a slow easy life. He lived for adventure and with the rise of the costumed adventurer, he seemed bent on carving his own path as a hero. But as a famed celebrity and well known public figure, he knew he needed an edge that would keep him from the public eye.

His brother in law Cornelius Doom would provide him the answer to his quest. Doom stumbled upon a strange chemically produced gem that he embedded in a belt buckle. When twisted the gem would cause a field of light to bend around the person wearing the belt and make them invisible. Along with another special weapon, a ring that created paralyzing rays of energy, Carson was able to become the invisible hero known as the Echo.

The Echo’s adventures would continue for much of the World War as a bad knee would keep Carson stateside during the war (though he did work in ad campaigns for war bonds.) Though he rarely faced challenges as great as other heroes, he would still be forced into battle with the mad Yankee Doodle Jones.

River City History: The threat of MEDUSA

Yankee Doodle Jones would equate himself for months as a daring agent for the Allies in the early days of the war. But like his predecessor, the monster of Frankenstein, his mental stability would not last.

As war loomed closer, Yankee Doodle Jones and Dandy uncovered a specially designed unit of Fifth Columnists known as MEDUSA (Military Echelon for the Downfall of the United States of America). They fought the agents of MEDUSA for much of 1942.

Whether by the nature of his multiple bodies or as a result of Stein’s serum, Yankee Doodle Jones grew more and more paranoid about MEDUSA’s activities. He started to see Nazi agents in everything, from street crime to inside the police precincts. He became increasingly distant from Dandy as his paranoia increased, even accusing his young ally of being a Fifth Columnist himself.

Dandy would start to work less and less with his partner. Uncle Sam assigned him to a new unit alongside Georgia hero Johnny Rebel and the New York based Yankee Boy.  As the Young Americans they would become a popular group working to build support for the Allied soldiers while also working as crime-fighters and attempting to uncover the masterminds behind MEDUSA. By mid-1943, Dandy would leave River City and Yankee Doodle Jones permanently to work with the Young Americans. The unit, soon joined by Nathan Hale and Canadian heroine Jetgirl would work together regularly well into their twenties and the next decade.

Jones remained in River City though, intent on rooting out MEDUSA where it originated—and everywhere else as well. The massacre of three off-duty River City police officers and their wives in early 1944 would be the last straw. His paranoia had morphed into a murderous rage that threatened everyone in the city. The city’s other heroes would have to unite to defeat the super-powered threat.

River City History: Yankee Doodle Jones

As Andy Stein watched the new being rise and meet his father, a group of Fifth Columnists attacked the facility. Breaking in on the lab, they opened fire. The super-man leaped to the defense of his maker, but it was already too late. Albrecht and Andy Stein both took several hits from submachine gun fire. Albrecht died instantly. His son struggled to the nearest lab table where the serum that ran through the super-man’s veins rested. He drank the remainder of the formula even as he quickly bled out from his wounds.

The new man leaped into action against the traitors. He made short work of them as his bulletproof skin and super-strength made him more than a match for armed killers. He left them broken, bleeding and dying, just like the man that created him.

Andy Stein’s wounds healed quickly as the serum slowly replaced his own bloodstream. He would be the first—and last—human to survive the use of this formula (though distillations or similar formulas would give powers to Black Terror and Doc Strange).

The new creation was the sum of all his parts, but the patriotic fervor of the veterans proved his strongest trait. He declared himself a protector of the freedoms and standards of the American people. He dubbed himself Yankee Doodle after first helping Andy to his feet. When the boy introduced himself, he misheard the boy’s name as Dandy.

Yankee Doodle and Dandy would become the first super-powered agents of a mysterious American spymaster known only as Uncle Sam. He gave the new hero the last name Jones. (Dandy would also operate under the pseudonym Andrew Jones.)

River City History: The legacy of Frankenstein

Frankenstein became a name synonymous with uncontrolled science in the twentieth century, but the legacy of Victor Frankenstein’s creation sat fresh in the minds of many people around the world as the Second World War raged on. Dozens of artificial beings inspired by the original creature were created over the course of that half-decade, but perhaps the strangest had his origins in River City.

Albrecht Stein is now believed to be a descendant of the Frankenstein legacy, but modern records cannot be sure if even he was aware of that knowledge when he set to work on creating an artificial man as the United States entered the war in 1941. It is known that despite his German heritage he had an unrepentant hatred for the Nazi war machine.

But perhaps that does not forgive what some still call a crime against nature.

Stein gathered three veteran military men, all crippled in battle. None of the men remained functional members of society and Stein picked them because they all exhibited suicidal tendencies. Still, his methods still seem insane to most. Instead of operating on corpses like his ancestor Victor, Stein abducted these three men to make his artificial being. (Debate still exists as to whether the three men came willingly or not.)

It took him only a matter of hours to complete the complex surgery necessary to create his artificial man. Three men died, but a super-man took his place. Stein filled his creature’s veins with another experiment of his, a serum that caused that made his ubermensch nearly indestructible as well as faster and stronger than a mere mortal.

Albrecht’s son Andrew watched the whole procedure. Unfortunately for the Steins, he did it while compromising the job assigned to him by his father. Stein’s experiments were known to the United States government, but they were also known to Fifth Columnists within the U.S. ranks.

That would, in the end, cost numerous American lives.