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The Corncob County High School System and its Superhero Populace

a status report by Maj. L.T. Thomas, April 12, 1987

Prior to 1982, only a few costumed heroes were active. All were adults and all had very limited powers. The most versatile of all the adult heroes was Icarus, a man with silver-toned skin and wings who could fly. Other, non-powered, adults worked as vigilante crimefighters and rescue organizations. Among them: the Peculiar Patrol and the now defunct Fantastic Challengers.

In 1982, the first teenage superhero emerged in Smyrna’s Griffin Middle School. Calling himself Power Lad, he posessed mental abilities far greater than any of the adults and challenged the school’s regime of Principal Bill Food and Assistant Principal Marsha Smelliot. He was imprisoned in the school’s on campus isolation for his actions.

A word about Food and Smelliot: this villain was active for some time before his criminal schemes were exposed. It turns out that he was the leader of a drug cartel who moved into Griffin, and who changed the name, unofficially, to Sniffin on both the building itself and all internal documentation. Teachers were given the option of going along with his drug sales plans or lose their jobs. Several teachers were killed in what was then called an accident when a single engine prop plane crashed on the baseball field. It is speculated that these were teachers who threatened to expose Food and were murdered, their bodies arranged in an effort to conceal Food’s wrongdoing. In any event, no other teachers spoke against Food, and the new teachers who were hired to replace the whistleblowers were in all likelihood fellow criminals of Food.

Less than a month after Power Lad’s imprisonment, four other heroes emerged at Sniffin Middle, founding the GMS Legion: Matter Lad, Sunstorm, Chewable Kid and Colossal Kid. Within weeks, they had recruited Panthera and Speedy and rescued Power Lad. They also found six heroes who could barely control their new powers, coining them the Substitutes. They began a long, underground struggle against the Food regime, a struggle that cost them Power Lad, Sunstorm and four of the Substitutes. A fifth, called Ultra Lad, remains in a coma at Kenneth Stone Hospital. The sixth, Infectious Girl, joined the Legion.

As the Food regime crumbled following the death of that villain and incarceration of his criminal teachers and hired security force, the heroes split up but remained active in their costumed roles. Meanwhile, other heroes emerged at other area middle and high schools. At Wheels of Industry High, a boy named Snowstorm (now attending Princeton University) began a late-night costumed patrol. At Daniel and the Lion Middle School, teens named Sunburn and Ocean Boy forged a friendship and partnership that has lasted until today at Sprayed Berries High as two of the six-member Defense Force. And at Scandal High School in 1984, ten heroes joined forces to fight another criminal regime led by that school’s assistant principal Lattanzi.

In one of the defining moments of superherodom in Corncob, Lattanzi arranged for these ten heroes to be ambushed. Six arrived at the trap and five died at the hands of Lattanzi’s sons and the armed ROTC unit. The five survivors remained in hiding, thought to be missing, until the arrival in fall 1984 of three former GMS Legionnaires as new freshmen at Scandal. Once learning the situation, Matter Lad reformed the group and inducted the five Scandal survivors, and once again the GMS Legion destroyed a criminal empire.

This event had immediate ramifications for the community. It let the populace at large know that an increasing number of superhuman criminals were baffling the police, and that the Corncob school system was a hotbed of corruption. Most of the Corncob County Board of Edermekation lost their jobs in a purge, and Mayretta native Bill Prater was named new Superintendent of Schools. Prater hired the clearly reformed Marsha Smelliot as new Scandal principal, and, through her, rewarded the GMS Legion by giving them a continued license to fight any evil in their costumed identities. He also charged that all ten Corncob high schools (that number including the now-closed Bill’s High School) have at least one hero associated with the staff to help monitor supercriminal activities in the community and the school. There was, however, very limited communication between schools as to how their charges would conduct themselves. Mayretta City High, not affiliated with the county school system, went so far as to costume their team in matching, military-style uniforms.

It’s worth mentioning that every costumed hero who has debuted in the last five years has done so in Corncob County. The concentration is in the southeastern part of the county, around Scandal, Blizzard of Osbourne and Bill’s High Schools. However, no heroes have appeared in nearby Fulton County. Some analysts believe the Chattahoochee River may act as a border for whatever has granted these teens their powers.

As the number of high school heroes has grown, natural rivalries have developed among the schools and they all have very specific fields of activity limited to their own school districts, only rarely venturing into others’ territories. For example, the GMS Legion has an unofficial jurisdiction that covers Lumber Land Mall as it is in their district. If any other heroes had need to investigate criminal activities at that mall, they would be unlikely to do so without notifying the Legion first. The different districts of the county lend themselves to different types of investigations. McMoney is located in affluent, sparsely populated West Cobb, and those heroes look into far more home burglaries than heroes in other schools.

Colleges across the country have taken notice of super-powered teens, but only a handful have reacted and geared programs and scholarships to the heroes. Surprisingly, the athletics-oriented University of Georgia is not currently among them. The nine schools with superhero programs are: Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Florida State, Tennessee Tech, the University of Texas, the University of Alabama, the University of South Carolina, Clemson University and the West Presbyterian School for the Deaf. So far, these programs have met with limited success. Of the eight heroes who have graduated from Corncob high schools, only five have selected a school with a hero program. The other three, including former GMS Legionnaire Phantom Lass, went to Princeton and formed a team there outside of that school’s environs.

Politically, the heroes have a large number of enemies even outside the known criminal and conspiratorial threats. Among their peers, the heroes have a tendency towards outsidership, particularly in schools like Blizzard of Osbourne and South Corncob. There is considerable jealousy and envy coupled with the standard class, peer and social status attitudes seen in any American high school. Only at McMoney High is the situation totally in the heroes’ favor, as 90% of the students, and all of the heroes, are from the same economic, very affluent, group, and all students tend towards the same social likes and dislikes. At the opposite extreme is Mayretta City, where the heroes are roundly despised by most, if not all of the student body thanks to the school’s failed effort to give their team, Warbird One, some misguided "elite" status. Warbird One is even at odds with the sole Mayretta hero, Swami Sally, who has refused to join the team.

Among the populace, the situation is even more polarised. Older Corncob residents, particularly members of the strong First Baptist Church of Smyrna, have vocally complained about the heroes, and area Republicans have issued loud complaints about the use of federal funding to provide, for example, the large security bases at Scandal and at Trojan for the GMS Legion and the Liberty Squadron. The Corncob Parent-Teacher Agglomeration has a blanket anti-hero policy. Among most other sectors of the population, however, the heroes are adored. The media has only recently taken an interest in the team, however most efforts to commercialize the heroes fail due to their status as minors, and some heroes’ stated refusal to gain celebrity from their powers while still attending Corncob schools. This rather surprising position may stem from a county mandate that has not been made public.

No one can accurately predict the future for heroics in Corncob; however, it may be a limited one. While the middle schools, which is where most students develop powers, have a blanket "no-press" veil over their charges, it transpired that many of the students who went to high school in the fall of 1986 had faked or artificial powers. Reports are strong that there are fewer middle school heroes than at this time last year. Perhaps if this trend continues, within six or seven years all of the Corncob heroes will have left the public schools and be left to their own devices as private citizens.