When Tangents Attack: The Life and Times of Doc Comet and the Tremendous Trio!

The Tremendous Trio (from Left to Right) - Jennifer "Ladybird" Juniper, Geoffrey "Doc Comet" Jenkins and Tommy "Blockade Boy" Teale

     I'm currently playing a tabletop role-playing game set in a high school for young superheroes. During the game, it was established that the High School also has a small annex for students who are younger than High School age. This caters to a relatively small number of students, because most superhuman powers manifest during adolescence. As part of the faculty for the high school, I created a teacher whose primary role would be overseeing the Elementary Annex. 

Jennifer Teale

    Jennifer Teale is a former member of the minor Silver Age team, The Tremendous Trio (Doc Comet, Ladybird1 and Blockade Boy), which formed when a science teacher and his two prize students were exposed to radiation from a mysterious meteorite. They fought crime and investigated weird science mysteries for a number of years until Doc Comet retired to academia, and Jennifer married Thomas (Blockade Boy).
    Since then, Jennifer has been involved in education for most of her life and has written several books on the subject. She has a kindly, grandmotherly demeanour and a lively, scientific curiosity which endears her greatly to her young charges, however, it would be unwise to underestimate her. Having been a teacher for decades, she has a spine of iron behind her soft outer shell, and while her crimefighting days are far behind her, she's still deceptively strong for her size and age.
    So, once again, in creating a minor, purely tangential character, I've fallen down a rabbit hole, and you're all coming with me.

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FROM THE PAGES OF 'THE COMET WEEKLY'
The Publication History of Doc Comet and the Tremendous Trio

Doc Comet

    Doc Comet was originally created for a British Comic Paper 'The Comet'2 during the early 1960s. This early version of Doc Comet was little more than a narrator, a kind of super-scientist who would offer asides and commentary on the various stories (mostly educational pieces detailing historical events or adventure stories)3.

    Another minor feature of the series, The Tremendous Two, was about a duo of precocious young people with a keen interest in academics. Jenny Juniper and Tommy Teale would stumble upon minor mysteries or neighbourhood disputes and attempt to resolve them with clever tricks or knowledge gleaned from careful attention to their schoolwork or dedicated reading of educational material (like 'The Comet')4. 

    Unfortunately, despite the high ideals of the Paper's founder, Morris Hampton, the sales began to founder, and they brought in acclaimed writers Frank Leonard and artist Laurence Keen5 to 'spice up' the paper. One of the things they did, inspired by the Trans-Atlantic popularity of the 'Batman' TV series, was turn Doc Comet from a narrator into a fully-fledged character and brought a newly super-powered Tremendous Two (with Jenny and Tommy becoming Ladybird and Blockade Boy, respectively) together with him to form The Tremendous Trio.

    While Leonard and Keen would continue to give lip service to Hampton's ideals of educational stories, their main focus was on suspense, action and wild adventures. Soon, the trio were rocketing off to space, battling giant-sized insects after being shrunk down to ant-size by a criminal scientist, or being flung back in time to the days of the Roman Occupation of Britain!5
    Unfortunately, despite some inspired and creative storytelling by Leonard and Keen's meticulously detailed artwork, the changes did little to save 'The Comet', and it would eventually be subsumed within the pages of the Boys' Adventure Paper 'Sensation!', a magazine much more interested in providing thrills and adventure than edifying scientific knowledge.6
    During the 90's, the Trio made a return of sorts in 'Wildfire!' a short-lived comic paper aimed at a more adult audience.7 Cutting edge creator, Stu Sunderland featured them in a cameo in his epic series 'The Jerusalem Project', which revived a host of almost forgotten British Heroes battling their own malaise and sense of hopelessness as much as they struggled against the series' villain, the Faustian 'Mister Miller'.8
    The series featured Doc Comet as a stuffy, moralistic academic (in a very obvious jab at Morris Hampton) and presented Jenny and Tommy, now a married couple, with Jennifer as a school teacher in a rough school and Thomas as a mechanic in a down-and-out job, struggling to get by in post-Thatcherite Britain, their powers largely forgotten "because superpowers never put food on a table, nor pay to keep a roof over one's head!"

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TWO-FISTED EDUCATION! 
The Adventures of the Tremendous Trio!  

    The Tremendous Trio were formed when young schoolchildren, Jenny Juniper and Tommy Teale discovered that their science teacher, Geoffrey Jenkins was the scientific adventurer Doc Comet when he was overcome by a trap laid by his arch-nemesis, the mad scientist Professor Boogle. The two children are resourceful enough to distract the villain and help their teacher escape the trap in time to capture the mad professor. 

    As a reward, he invites the children to come with him to the National Observatory, where he will be returning the meteorite stolen by the villain. The Professor then fires a pistol which strikes the meteorite, shattering it into a million pieces and showering the two children in mysterious, glowing space dust. This gives the pair strange new abilities and Doctor Jenkins offers to help train them to use these powers to help other people.
    The two children agree, and the Tremendous Two becomes The Tremendous Trio! 

    Doc Comet was a young school teacher when he witnessed what he thought was a meteorite crashing nearby. Heading out on his trusty bicycle, he discovered an odd metal capsule. The capsule contained a diary claiming to be from the far-off future of 1986, as well as several pieces of high-tech equipment, and a mysterious serum. The serum, the diary claimed, was 'enhanced by radiation from Halley's Comet' and would grant the user enhanced intelligence, capable of using the various pieces of high-tech equipment, and limitless resources of energy. 

The nefarious Professor Boogle

    At some point between this point and the formation of The Tremendous Trio, Doc Comet
would first run afoul of criminal genius Doctor Jeremiah Boogle who had discovered that the Doctor's incredible energy reserves could serve as the perfect power-source for many of his diabolical inventions. At first, Boogle, who had been one of Geoffrey Jenkins' University Professors tried to act as an advisor for his former student in his new, super-powered career, but it soon became apparent where his true intentions lay, and Boogle went from Doc Comet's trusted advisor, to his most bitter nemesis.

    He was also instrumental in the creation of Doc Comet's greatest allies, the young heroes who would, with Doc, make up the Tremendous Trio. The studious and plucky Jenny Juniper became Ladybird, capable of shrinking to tiny size, while possessing the strength of ten! And the practical-minded Tommy Teale, who gained the ability to create near-impenetrable walls of force as Blockade Boy! The two were equipped with devices created by Doc Comet to help them control and enhance their abilities, and together, the trio embarked on a series of astonishing exploits! 

    These included rocketing off to Mars to head off a second War of the Worlds, foiling an attempt by international criminals to steal an experimental Atomic-powered Submarine, exposing a top secret spy ring who wanted to kidnap the Prime Minister, defeating The Master of the Air, a high-flying pirate who tried to blackmail Britain by shutting down all radio and television signals, and even putting paid to a fraudulent Scottish Lord and a phony Loch Ness Monster.
    Their most amazing adventures, however, were the ones where they went head-to-head with the evil Professor Boogle who seemed to have a never-ending well of diabolical schemes within his villainous mind! His most famous device was his time machine, which he used three times to transport his enemies back in history - once to Roman-occupied Britain where he planned to have himself installed as ruler of the whole island, once to the Wild West, where he attempted to steal large quantities of a strange radioactive mineral which would power a host of terrible new inventions, and once to the prehistoric past where he planned to use technological devices to control an army of dinosaurs which he would unleash upon the modern world!. At one point, he managed to duplicate their powers, and create a band of superpowered henchmen. Later, he would shrink them to the size of ants. Each time they would defeat him, he would vanish briefly, only to return with yet another, even more sinister plot.

Thomas Teale, The Former 
Blockade Boy

    Eventually, the Trio's adventures began to have longer and longer gaps between them. The kids went on to higher education and had less time for adventures. Meanwhile, Doc Comet's serum began to have less and less of an effect each time he drank it. During this time, Professor Boogle was reported missing, the result of a failed jailbreak using a malfunctioning time machine and there didn't seem as much need for the Tremendous Trio any more.

    The three would finally come together for the last time in 1986, where the trio re-united to uncover the mystery of who had sent the original time capsule back. Ironically, the responsible party ended up being a returning Professor Boogle who attempted to destroy his greatest opponent once and for all, only to ironically find himself responsible for his existence in the first place! 

    The next time they would appear, Jennifer Teale (nee Juniper) would be in charge of the Elementary Annex at The Claremont Academy in Arcadia in the US, a professional educator with many books written on the topic of education and development of young people. Now married to Thomas, a semi-retired mechanic and engineer currently working part time for Smilin' Stan's Excelsior Emporium. Dr.Jenkins, formerly Doc Comet, has passed away in the intervening time, but the events of his passing have yet to be detailed.

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1. Ladybird took her name from 'Ladybird Books', a publishing imprint which produced mass-market children's books in a 'pocket size' 56-page hardcover format. The Ladybird books covered a wide range of topics, reproducing classic and original stories in easy to read format, as well as informational topics covering history, nature, family life, travel and hobbies.

2. Morris Hampton, Frank Leonard and Laurence Keen are named for a number of influential figures in British Comics history - Marcus Morris (creator of 'The Eagle' Magazine), Frank Hampson (creator of 'Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future'), Don Lawrence (Artist of 'The Trigun Empire' and Leo Baxendale (creator of numerous strips including 'Dennis the Menace' and 'The Bash Street Kids' for 'The Beano').

3. 'The Comet' was based on 'The Eagle' and 'Look and Learn'. Both magazines featured a combination of educational materials and comic strips usually adapted from classic works of fiction. Both comics were also known for a signature science fiction strip - Dan Dare for 'The Eagle' and 'The Trigun Empire' for 'Look and Learn'.

4. The Tremendous Two are influenced by a combination of Enid Blyton's child investigators, most notably The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, with a little of Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown thrown in. In their adventures, Jenny tends to be more academic-minded and better at schoolwork, while Tommy is more practical-minded and skilled at crafting projects and practical applications of knowledge. 

5. Each of these adventures would be accompanied by appropriate educational material on, for instance, space travel (with cutaway diagrams of the lunar lander), common backyard insects (possibly with detailed plans on how to build an ant-farm), and historical information on the Roman occupation of Britain (how to build your own model hill fort).

6. This was common practice, and the phrase "Great News For All Readers!" on a cover would arouse feelings of dread as your once beloved comic would be absorbed into another title, with most of its features vanishing without trace after a few short weeks, during which time, the original title would appear as a sub-heading. In this case, 'Sensation!' featuring 'The Comet'.

7. In the mid-late 80's and early 90's, there was an attempt in the UK to product comic magazines for mature readers. The most popular of these was 'Deadline' which featured series such as 'Tank Girl', 'Strange Days' and 'Johnny Nemo', but it was soon joined by 'Crisis', 'Revolver' and 'Toxic', all of whom met with mixed success. 
'Wildfire!' is my take on this particular phenomenon, mixed with Dez Skinn's 'Warrior' which is best known for featuring the earliest installments of Alan Moore's revival of 'Marvelman' and 'V for Vendetta', among others.

8. 'The Jerusalem Project' named, of course, after the William Blake poem is my take on Moore's 'Marvelman' and 'Albion' and Grant Morrison's 'Zenith', which re-examined the idea of the British Superhero through a Thatcherite and Post-Thatcher lens, respectively. Mister Miller is named for Blake's 'Dark, Satanic Mills' (and not Mark Millar... though the comparison could be made...).
"Super powers never put food on the table..." is me taking a bit of a dig at British 'Kitchen Sink Realism'.