Ironhorse and Colt

In my own private Idaho/universe Ironhorse is the face of the street-level heroes. While King Quest and his lot deal with the End-of-the World killer sentient asteroids and rogue weaponized moons, Ironhorse gets the doomsday cults, psychos, and mob bosses with a certain sartorial flare.

Big Sam Mead, Ironhorse, hasn't really changed much in the last couple of decades since he was created. Still the Indefatigable Detective and Coal-fired Constable, more Slam Bradley meets Ace Egan – Ace of Space than the traditional urban hero. He's the founder of a hero dynasty that includes Colt, Shotgun Betty, Kid Colt (who would go on to become Mustang), Pepper Gunn, and Copper Kidd while his brother, Elvis Mead – Jaguar – would inspire Cougar and Redhawk.

Fort Joshua is my fictionopolis. Somewhere in the midwestern United State or Prairie Provinces of Canada, this is where King Quest, Ironhorse, the Liberty Guard, Piltdown Industries, Doctor Colossus, Astromo, and the rest hang their hats and frequently throw down.

Samuel and Elvis Mead grew up in the McElvaney Moor section of Fort Joshua in the 1920s, sons of an architect and a court stenographer. Sam was always the 'big guy' and played the lug to his little brother's genius despite graduating top of his class and receiving countless offers of scholarship from a few universities. While Elvis did go on to college and became a noted archaeologist, Sam took after his uncle Marty and joined the Fort Joshua police department where he would have been quite happy to remain a harness bull for the rest of his working career.

Sam was known and respected around town and even helped out the Pearl Street Gang, a pack of improbably diverse kids who fought mobsters and fifth columnists during the war.

In 1941, way back in the bowels of storage at the Stoltzfus History Museum a long forgotten crate exploded nearly killing assistant Linus Ross with wooden shrapnel. Museum curator Elvis Mead ran to investigate and found Ross bloody and confused and a hazy man-shaped mist wandering through the stacks. Elvis then called his brother the cop, but by the time Sam Mead showed up the mist had vanished. In the wreckage of the crate Sam found an intricately carved black ivory coffer with an impressive hole in the side. When he touched the coffer Sam was assailed with visions, a history of alien worlds and the Ashkifex - a para-governmental brotherhood of roving judges, of the Apocolyptican – a menace so terrible it took Ashkifex operatives from three systems to cage it, and of the coffer's journey from the depths of space buried in a comet's heart to the steppes of Mongolia where it lay beneath the earth for a thousand years.

It was four days before Sam awoke. He was hoping it had all been a bad dream, but he remembered things – histories, cultures, stories from a thousand worlds well beyond the Sol system. And he knew, without hesitation or question, that the coffer was a Bone Engine, and was now a part of him. He had been rebuilt as an agent of the Ashkifex with black metal bones and internal organs humans had no names for. Sam was to find he was stronger, faster, more resilient by far, had senses beyond human, and apertures on his palms that resembled eyes from which he could discharge energy.

The Apocalyptican, having learned from its previous capture and incarceration, merged with the first warm body it found outside the museum; Karl Hersch, a homeless former engineer and architect. While the merge did cut the Apocalytican's power down a great deal it also allowed it to remain undetected by the Bone Engine (and subsequently the Engine's current host) as long as it didn't use any of its powers.

Samuel became the hero Iron Horse during the lulls between Apocalyptican activities. Sam eventually took on a sidekick, Julius Newhouse, named him Colt and trained him as both a detective and a brawler. Eventually the Bone Engine must have calculated that two agents would be useful and infected Colt with a version of itself.

Julius Newhouse was the son of a 'working girl' and a local bookie who was killed by Felix Saint, the Patron Saint of Crime, during his rise to power. Newhouse had run with the Pearl Street Gang as Newsy and became an informant for Ironhorse before ending up his partner. With Pepper Gunn Colt would adventure with Ironhorse through the '40s and '50s before striking out on his own and taking his own sidekick Lester Larson - Kid Colt.

In the course of their adventures Ironhorse and Colt would take on the Apocolyptican, the Inquisitors, the Crime Carnival (including the Ringmaster, Sideshow, Wild Bill Bellows, and the Small Timers), Tophat McClain, Father Night and the Marauders, and the White Knight who would reform after a stretch in prison and, with the unwilling assistance of Doctor Emilio Rhodes (Doctor Colossus) and his daughter Euphoria, become the hero Cataphract.

Everything here is mine, concept, text, and image.