Character History for Cape and Cowl
Calvin arrived in the City in April of 2009 and immediately threw a fit. Harvey Dent adopted him pretty much right away, after Billy invited him for a sleepover. Calvin was initially overjoyed to be in a different universe with superpowers, but was dismayed to discover he would still be forced to go to school.
Although he publically disavowed all superheroing ambitions, Calvin immediately adopted his (transparent) alter-ego of Stupendous Man and made a nuisance of himself as a kid hero. The only notable accomplishment of his crimefighting career was beating on Waspinator during a Decepticon attack, which isn’t saying much.
Ever since he was Ported in, Calvin has had to deal with life without the people important to him: his parents, Susie Derkins, and most importantly, a life without Hobbes. Many have found his exuberance endearing enough to give him a larger circle of acquaintances than he had at home. Given his nature Calvin quickly befriended Delirium of the Endless, who gifted him with a magical singing crocodile skull that Calvin named Norton.
During the summer of 2009 he also attempted to build an airplane for no real reason and held a super-powered waterfight around a treehouse complete with medals, also for no real reason. It was a real good summer all around, aside from the Polymorphs being Ported in: shape-shifting mutants that fed on personality traits and emotions. One of them devoured Calvin’s imagination and creativity, causing a brief yet horrifying transformation. When the Iron Suit exploded over the City, Calvin found brief employment collecting its bits for Tony Stark.
Things changed for Calvin in July when Godzilla went berserk due to a slow radiation breakdown. When the giant lizard dared to interrupt Calvin’s television time by causing a blackout, Stupendous Man flew into action. Solo.
This did not end well.
Godzilla smacked the kid several kilometres away, and although Calvin was relatively unharmed, the encounter still ended in lasting tragedy: Harvey grounded him for trying to fight radioactive kaiju unsupervised. Scarred by his experiences, Calvin has been retired from superheroing ever since.
Then there was the Other Mother incident, which Calvin still has nightmares about. Capable of creating incredibly realistic illusions, this creature slowly lured Calvin over the course of months with the promise of spoiling him rotten with everything he could imagine, including riding dinosaurs. And then she tried to eat his soul. Through his eyes. It was bad. Calvin was rescued, but the close call was terrifying enough that it left Calvin slightly less likely to get himself in trouble and more grateful for Harvey’s stricter, but less homicidal guardianship. After this, Sam Winchester taught Calvin how to make small charm bags to ward off demons, and he still has some of them. He thinks they keep monsters away when he leaves them under the bed.
Fall of 2009 was thankfully less eventful for the boy in terms of sheer terror. He burned leaves in the park to appease the mighty snow demons, got turned into a robot, attended Billy’s birthday and stalked the hell out of Harvey’s blind date out of love. Without a doubt the highlight of this time, if not of Calvin’s life, was when the Green Lantern Corp flew several of the City’s children to the Moon. Calvin’s mind remains permanently blown from this experience, and he will never not regard Kyle Rayner as one of the coolest people in existence. He also tried to steal a Moon landing plaque as a souvenir, but couldn’t get away with it. In keeping with C&C tradition, Calvin attempted to write his name on the Moon’s surface using his footprints in letters large enough to be seen from orbit. In the winter, someone gave Calvin and his family mystery circus tickets. He attended Remus and Edgeworth’s first, less icy Christmas party where he received a special ‘stealth cape’ from Parker.
Calvin got a chemistry set from Harvey for Christmas which allowed him to start 2010 with a bang. Practicing his unique brand of snowman sculpture, he brought forth the daring Avant-Garde masterpiece known as ‘The Dangers of Science.’ His chemistry experiments also caused no end of aggravation for Harvey. While preparing for the opening of the First Calvin Museum of Fine Modern Art, a certain amount of trolling by school staff led the boy to uncover the terrible truth: that Principal Summers was a cyborg. A cyborg with laser eyes. This eventually led Calvin to uncover the actual truth of where Professor Lupin went during the full Moon.
Cyborg or no cyborg, Principal Summers was still really cool for a principal because he made Calvin in charge of turning the school into a snow fort. It was stuff like this that made Calvin like Xavier’s much, much more than he’d ever liked school back home. This meant that when his dreams came true in Emplate assaulting the Institute, Calvin was surprised at how downcast he felt. More drama came into his life during the timeswitch: first Harvey was swapped with his homicidal future self, then Calvin became his chain-smoking private eye alter ego, Tracer Bullet.
When April approached so did Calvin’s one-year anniversary in the City. Since this would have made it hard to explain why he was still six years old, Calvin was Ported home for a time. He returned on April 20th, sadly bereft of Hobbes. During the summer he participated in a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament and actually made it to the second round! But then horror beyond imagining struck: a humourless teacher who was completely overreacting to an innocent little incident forced Calvin to confront his darkest fears by ATTENDING PROM. It’s possible that this latest ordeal broke Calvin’s spirit, and after being part of the best RPG session ever, he was Ported home again in August.
Calvin came back in December of 2010 and has been in the City ever since. It was a difficult return: Harvey, Billy, and many of the other people Calvin had come to care about were gone. He lived at the Xavier’s Institute for a while, and attended the now-infamous hotel holiday party. After thawing out and griping accordingly, Calvin used cutting-edge statistical analysis to select his new guardians: Angelica and Pietro, who’ve been stuck with the little troll ever since. Just when he was starting to care about them, something happened that Calvin had never had to deal with before outside of baby raccoons: Angelica died, murdered by Keith Anyan. Processing her senseless and temporary death forced Calvin to deal with deeper matters than he was used to, exposing a more emotional side. Since Angie’s return, Calvin has bounced back like the little kid he is. Recent adventures included the candy jackpot and pigeon-related horrors.
All in all, Calvin has been in C&C a long time and experienced a whole lot, both good and bad. Through it all, he has barely changed and grown at all, remaining the same kid he’s always been no matter what- as it should be.
Although he publically disavowed all superheroing ambitions, Calvin immediately adopted his (transparent) alter-ego of Stupendous Man and made a nuisance of himself as a kid hero. The only notable accomplishment of his crimefighting career was beating on Waspinator during a Decepticon attack, which isn’t saying much.
Ever since he was Ported in, Calvin has had to deal with life without the people important to him: his parents, Susie Derkins, and most importantly, a life without Hobbes. Many have found his exuberance endearing enough to give him a larger circle of acquaintances than he had at home. Given his nature Calvin quickly befriended Delirium of the Endless, who gifted him with a magical singing crocodile skull that Calvin named Norton.
During the summer of 2009 he also attempted to build an airplane for no real reason and held a super-powered waterfight around a treehouse complete with medals, also for no real reason. It was a real good summer all around, aside from the Polymorphs being Ported in: shape-shifting mutants that fed on personality traits and emotions. One of them devoured Calvin’s imagination and creativity, causing a brief yet horrifying transformation. When the Iron Suit exploded over the City, Calvin found brief employment collecting its bits for Tony Stark.
Things changed for Calvin in July when Godzilla went berserk due to a slow radiation breakdown. When the giant lizard dared to interrupt Calvin’s television time by causing a blackout, Stupendous Man flew into action. Solo.
This did not end well.
Godzilla smacked the kid several kilometres away, and although Calvin was relatively unharmed, the encounter still ended in lasting tragedy: Harvey grounded him for trying to fight radioactive kaiju unsupervised. Scarred by his experiences, Calvin has been retired from superheroing ever since.
Then there was the Other Mother incident, which Calvin still has nightmares about. Capable of creating incredibly realistic illusions, this creature slowly lured Calvin over the course of months with the promise of spoiling him rotten with everything he could imagine, including riding dinosaurs. And then she tried to eat his soul. Through his eyes. It was bad. Calvin was rescued, but the close call was terrifying enough that it left Calvin slightly less likely to get himself in trouble and more grateful for Harvey’s stricter, but less homicidal guardianship. After this, Sam Winchester taught Calvin how to make small charm bags to ward off demons, and he still has some of them. He thinks they keep monsters away when he leaves them under the bed.
Fall of 2009 was thankfully less eventful for the boy in terms of sheer terror. He burned leaves in the park to appease the mighty snow demons, got turned into a robot, attended Billy’s birthday and stalked the hell out of Harvey’s blind date out of love. Without a doubt the highlight of this time, if not of Calvin’s life, was when the Green Lantern Corp flew several of the City’s children to the Moon. Calvin’s mind remains permanently blown from this experience, and he will never not regard Kyle Rayner as one of the coolest people in existence. He also tried to steal a Moon landing plaque as a souvenir, but couldn’t get away with it. In keeping with C&C tradition, Calvin attempted to write his name on the Moon’s surface using his footprints in letters large enough to be seen from orbit. In the winter, someone gave Calvin and his family mystery circus tickets. He attended Remus and Edgeworth’s first, less icy Christmas party where he received a special ‘stealth cape’ from Parker.
Calvin got a chemistry set from Harvey for Christmas which allowed him to start 2010 with a bang. Practicing his unique brand of snowman sculpture, he brought forth the daring Avant-Garde masterpiece known as ‘The Dangers of Science.’ His chemistry experiments also caused no end of aggravation for Harvey. While preparing for the opening of the First Calvin Museum of Fine Modern Art, a certain amount of trolling by school staff led the boy to uncover the terrible truth: that Principal Summers was a cyborg. A cyborg with laser eyes. This eventually led Calvin to uncover the actual truth of where Professor Lupin went during the full Moon.
Cyborg or no cyborg, Principal Summers was still really cool for a principal because he made Calvin in charge of turning the school into a snow fort. It was stuff like this that made Calvin like Xavier’s much, much more than he’d ever liked school back home. This meant that when his dreams came true in Emplate assaulting the Institute, Calvin was surprised at how downcast he felt. More drama came into his life during the timeswitch: first Harvey was swapped with his homicidal future self, then Calvin became his chain-smoking private eye alter ego, Tracer Bullet.
When April approached so did Calvin’s one-year anniversary in the City. Since this would have made it hard to explain why he was still six years old, Calvin was Ported home for a time. He returned on April 20th, sadly bereft of Hobbes. During the summer he participated in a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament and actually made it to the second round! But then horror beyond imagining struck: a humourless teacher who was completely overreacting to an innocent little incident forced Calvin to confront his darkest fears by ATTENDING PROM. It’s possible that this latest ordeal broke Calvin’s spirit, and after being part of the best RPG session ever, he was Ported home again in August.
Calvin came back in December of 2010 and has been in the City ever since. It was a difficult return: Harvey, Billy, and many of the other people Calvin had come to care about were gone. He lived at the Xavier’s Institute for a while, and attended the now-infamous hotel holiday party. After thawing out and griping accordingly, Calvin used cutting-edge statistical analysis to select his new guardians: Angelica and Pietro, who’ve been stuck with the little troll ever since. Just when he was starting to care about them, something happened that Calvin had never had to deal with before outside of baby raccoons: Angelica died, murdered by Keith Anyan. Processing her senseless and temporary death forced Calvin to deal with deeper matters than he was used to, exposing a more emotional side. Since Angie’s return, Calvin has bounced back like the little kid he is. Recent adventures included the candy jackpot and pigeon-related horrors.
All in all, Calvin has been in C&C a long time and experienced a whole lot, both good and bad. Through it all, he has barely changed and grown at all, remaining the same kid he’s always been no matter what- as it should be.