NORTHERN FORCE

from upper right to lower left: Chinook, Velocity Johnson, Iron Will, Blue Bolt, Mystery Mansfield

Northern Force (Golden Age)

Mystery Mansfield: As you've probably guessed, Gordon Mansfield is your classic "mystery man" archetype. Born into the wealthy Mansfield family (who made their fortune at the turn of the century in the pulp and paper industry), Gordon had an unusual mutagenic gift. It seems his ocular perception was so acute that he could not only read the bottom line of an eye chart from 70 yards away, he could also perceive actions and reactions milliseconds before they actually occurred. (This ability lent itself especially well to gunplay and targeting, which Mansfield began to study at an early age.) Why Gordon became a hero is not really known, but it is generally felt that he does this out of a sense of duty and responsibility to his power, but does prefer to work on the seedier side of criminality, opting to go head to head with the lower elements of the underworld.

Blue Bolt: Charles Porter was a career military man who volunteered for "Project Blue Fire", an experimental program that would imbue its subject with the ability to control (electrokinesis/no speed) and become electricity (flight). As an unforeseen but beneficial side effect, the experiment made him extremely powerful and so there was no need for any other subjects.

Iron Will (Youngest): William Levy gained his immense super strength and invulnerability in the oddest and most unexplainable of ways. As a child, he had been playing with some friends in an unguarded warehouse when a skid loaded with iron fell from a shelving unit, landing on top of the boy. Instead of being crushed though, he was able to lift it off of himself and toss it aside. This feat gained national attention and Will was immediately taken from his family by the government, who did all they could to discover why the boy had suddenly become "Iron". (As near as anyone can tell, it was indeed his "iron will" that enabled him to survive being crushed and keeps him alive and super powered to this day)

Velocity Johnson (Oldest): Virgil Johnson is a mutant with the ability to move with great speed. Nearly twenty years before joining Northern Force (which was formed during WW2), he was a part of a super team named The Rebel Rousers, all of which were killed during an encounter with the now deceased villain "Revanche". Feeling that, as the fastest man alive, he should have been able to prevent his comrade's deaths, Velocity sank into a deep depression, looking to any bottle for solace.

Chinook: Emily Little Tree gained her power to control the wind through heredity. Since before remembrance, there has always been a female protector of the Ojibwe Nation, whose power was supposedly given to her by a simple sparrow. As one protector died, that power was passed on to the first born child thereafter, and so on through the generations.