A COMPLETE and EXHAUSTIVE History
of the Challengers of the Unknown



Challengers of the X-Files

Volume 3, 1 - 18

Issues

History

Eighteen Months Ago

Marlon Corbet flies a commercial passenger jet. Kenn Kawa, Clay Brody, and Brenda Ruskin are passengers. So is a man named Saxon.

Off-screen, Dr Carcosa, under the Mojave Desert, again tests his Tesla field on a jet passing overhead. (Not recorded, but explained in COTU V3 9.)

The pilots see a weird bright light. The controls go haywire. Marlon, Kenn, Clay, and Brenda disappear. The jet crashes.

Five people stagger from the wreck. Four see a second weird light (another facet of the Tesla field?). Marlon sees the dead passengers rise to Heaven. (Marlon is a religious man, dazed and shocked. He's hallucinating.)

One survivor, Saxon, shields his eyes from the light. Also marked, but by darkness, he slinks away.

The four known survivors are rescued. The crash is national news.

(This version is unofficial, cobbled together as a docu-drama by Nina Justis, an infamous muckraker and "alien abductee" (COTU V3 4) We have no offical version from the Challengers themselves.)


One Year Ago

Rocky, the only Challenger left in the world, runs out of options. Nothing he's pursued can find his missing friends.

A jetliner crashes. Miraculously, four people survive. They witnessed a tremendous weird light. (COTU V3 4.) The disaster is national news.

Rocky Davis must see this crash - a mirror of his own team's experience - can't be mere coincidence. Unknown powers are at work. (Unrecorded.)

Ted Sands, who witnessed a fierce light during World War II, "knows" the survivors witnessed a similar light. (Unrecorded, but Sands's second sight knows of anyone who saw the light, as cited in COTU V3 12.)

Clay Brody returns to NASCAR race driving. His car runs out of control, crashes, and burns. Clay walks away unhurt and eeriely calm (COTU V3 12).

Clay is approached by Mister (Ted) Sands, who speaks engimatically of the plane crash and the weird light. How Clay must feel dislocated, as if he's "died but it hasn't sunk in yet". Sands hands over his card. "I think I have a cure, if you're interested... You've been blessed... You and the others can do a great deal of good, if you choose." (COTU V3 12)

Mister Sands similarly approaches Marlon Corbet, commercial pilot; Brenda Ruskin, physicist; and Kenn Kawa, renegade games designer, all survivors of a life-altering jet crash. (Confirmed in COTU V3 12.)

(Marlon's last name is spelled with two Ts in the first issue, but always "Corbet" afterwards, so we use that spelling.)

Mister Sands

 Rocky Davis and Misters Sands meet to discuss forming a new team.  Rocky will license the name.  Sands will provide funding. (Unrecorded but discussed in COTU V3 7 and COTU V3 11 and elsewhere.)

Rocky Davis

Rocky Davis licenses the Challengers' name and franchise to the group. They become the new, young Challengers.

Eschewing "spandex", these no-nonsense adventurers wear civilian clothes. Yet out of tradition, each wears the hourglass logo in individual style. Kenn wears an amulet, Brenda a scarf and T-shirt, Marlon a button, and Clay a symbol painted on his jacket.

The new team charges into many weird adventures.

Their first adventures are unrecorded. (Brenda sarcastically comments in COTU V3 1 that she'd love to spend another night in jail.) They save a great number of people "from San Diego to Long Island".  They debunk the alleged UFO abduction of Nina Justis.  (Recounted in COTU V3 4)

Summoned by an editor, the new Challengers visit the office of DC Comics. They find they're subjects of a forthcoming comic book! (More Weird Mystery Tales)

The new Challengers are featured on television. (In COTU V3 1, Marlon notes if someone watches TV, they should recognize the Challengers.)

A poster notes, "They Must Uncover the Truth Even If It Kills Them".

Summoned through their website, the new Challs journey to Harvest, Wyoming. People are sacrificed to The Harvesting and the "Challengers of the Unknown" are out to stop it (COTU V3 1).

Drug addicts die and come back to life as "Undead". The Challs fight off mobs of zombies to see who's behind a bizarre mind-control experiment (COTU V3 2).

A stranger in Dayton is wrenching reality - and innocent people - through the fourth dimension.  This "Threshold" may explode and tear reality apart.  The Challengers confront the fiend, who sucks in Marlon - and implodes.  Why?  Because, Kenn posits, "what happened in the Rockies" (their secret origin), has made them "mysteries even to themselves."  (COTU V3 3)

Nina Justis, fake UFO abductee and schlock journalist, tours and touts her book. Because the new Challengers debunked her abduction, she plans to get revenge and expose their secrets. Nina digs, interviews, and compiles a dramatization of the crash that created the Challs - including the vision of the brilliant and unearthly light. But before Nina can show the film to the world, she is - no kidding - abducted by real live aliens who steal the film. Dumped back to Earth, she knows she's screwed. No one will ever believe it. (COTU V3 4)

Why should aliens take an interest in the new Challs?

The Challengers are called to a grisly and inexplicable family murder - and Clay Brody walks out. Possessed, he rampages through the city and through his mind. Knocked out by electricity and the truth, Clay settles some demons from his past.  (COTU V3 5)

The Challengers' website is flooded by calls for help when 400,000,000 people around the world go comatose. But Kenn Kawa rushes off to Salt Lake City. One of the fallen is his daughter. Topaz becomes the key to liberating a "golden king" and the worldwide victims.  (COTU V3 6)

Recently

Brenda visits an old college professor. He's killed and his lab fired. Brenda rescues his work. He specialized in electromagnetic fields, investigating plane disappearances over the Mojave Desert. Kenn, Brenda, and Clay take off in a convertible to check the place out. Notified by Marlon, Rocky is horrified: "They don't know how dangerous it is!" Marlon will fly a borrowed plane. Rocky goes along. In the desert, the plane spots the convertible. Off-screen, under the desert, Dr Carcosa pushes a button. The convertible vanishes. The doctor orders a missile fired. Rocky and Marlon's plane is shot down and crashes. As the convertible vanishes, Ace, Red, Prof, and June rematerialize. No time has passed for them. By the light of the burning plane, Rocky is reunited with his missing teammates. Marlon meets them for the first time.  (COTU V3 7)




Dodging Carcosa's thugs, the Challs hide in a cave. Red explains what's happened. Prof wanders off to scout. Red confesses that the original team also saw a bright light before crashing, but never spoke of it. Prof comes back and leads them to an airshaft. Red notes, "This is the first time in six years we've had an adventure together. Hope we survive it." Red, Ace, Rocky, June, Prof, and Marlon creep into the compound. They're caught and made prisoners. But Saxon bursts in and shoots down the guards. Since they all want the compound destroyed, shall they work together? (COTU V3 8)


Bearding the lion in its den, Dr Carcosa and Prof talk about Tesla fields. (They're the only two that really understand them, after all.) Saxon, an anti-Challenger, has been shooting up the generators, which run wild. In the confusion, Prof expertly twists a dial. A convertible roars into the room bearing Kenn, Clay, and Brenda in mid-conversation. (They were disincorporated without knowing it.) ALL the Challengers are gathered for the first time. Rocky is shot. The Tesla field is melting down: may in fact endanger the planet. Someone has to go INTO the field to shut down the reactors. Leaving Rocky to thrown the switch, Red, June, Prof, and Ace enter the brilliant glowing field and disappear. Kenn, Brenda, and Marlon run, with Clay lugging Rocky. They get clear when the field implodes. Obviously, the original Challs shut down the field and saved the planet. The new team vows to carry on the name.  (COTU V3 9)

The young Challengers investigate "Broken Spirits" (COTU V3 10) that are driving people mad in a new-laid desert city. Brenda Ruskin is visited by the ghost / not-ghost of her dead sister Eileen.

Mister Theodore(?) "Ted" Sands is the Challengers' benefactor who funds them - for his own mysterious reasons. He gets an impossible letter or phone call from an old comrade to come to Gotham City - impossible because the old friend, Paul Hemmings, is still young. He flies out immediately. (Unrecorded but implied in
COTU V3 11.)

In Los Angeles, Rocky dedicates a statue to his missing partners. Not in the spirit that they're dead, but because "their sense of adventure and justice began this age in which we find ourselves." And while he's pleased to advise the New Challengers, he'll "never abandon the certainty that the originals will one day be together again."

After the dedication, Rocky meets with the New Challengers. Brenda wishes they could have really met, that is, without people shooting and things exploding. She emailed the data on Tesla fields to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Rocky heads to Boston to continue the search for his partners.

The Challengers are missing their benefactor, Mister Sands. Sarah Hargate discovers he flew on short notice to Gotham City. (COTU V3 11)

In Gotham, Mister Sands walks through fog - and time, seeing familiar events from 1945. Robin tries to guard Sands and is captured by deranged and dangerous vets. Batman enters the scene. (COTU V3 11)

Ted Sands meets Paul Hemmings, whom Sands served with in World War II. Except Hemmings is still 20-odd. He's "changed", become unhinged in time. He escorts Sands from Gotham to Okinawa in the Pacific. They see their younger selves standing on the beach - as a tremendous light fills the sky. It's August 6th, 1945. An atom bomb just obliterated Hiroshima. Yet Sands knows the distance is too great. THIS light is something else, something otherworldly that will mark him forever. (COTU V3 11)

It is, in fact, the same light the originals Challengers saw before their plane crash, and the same light the second team of Challengers saw before their crash. And all three occurrences are not related to Doctor Carcosa's displacement-weapon experiments. So what causes the light?

The Challengers, meanwhile, are ambushed in Gotham by Hemming's wacky vets - and they have Robin hostage. (COTU V3 11)  Batman starts a fight, the Challs join in, and the vets fall back. Paul Hemmings, the Antichronal Man, whips up visions of dinosaurs and the death of Batman's parents. Mister Sands talks him back to reality, and the crisis is averted. Hemmings goes to Arkham Asylum. (COTU V3 12)

Sands reveals he has second sight. He knows of everyone who's ever see The Light. The Challengers are stunned to learn there are "others". And that Sands brought the team together to find what happened to them...


So where are the original Challengers? Still cooking...