The Odds
In Reality Z-25 31-H, the Odds were a team of superheroes gathered around Captain Evening. While posing as Jenny Everywhere, a version of Jenny Nowhere was, surprisingly enough, a founding member of the team.
History
Formation
After rescuing her from Doctor Brain, Captain Evening invited interdimensional traveller “Jenny Everywhere” (actually Jenny Nowhere) to stay at the Fortress of Evening for as long as it took for her shifting powers to regenerate. (COMIC: Tales To Behold) She ended up staying even after that. (COMIC: Redistribution) He extended the same offer to the griffin Merv, whom he freed from a magical compulsion bplaced on him by Doctor Brain, this time so that Merv would have a place to stay, and allies, as he sought his revenge on Doctor Brain specifically. (COMIC: For Whom The Toll Bells) Completing the original line-up was Armstrong Fatbuckle, an unkillable undead skeleton, whom the Captain, Merv and Jenny encountered while foiling the Legion of Light. (COMIC: Enter–the Legion of Light!)
All of this occurred within a few weeks of Jenny's arrival in Reality Z-25 31-H, but by the end of that period, Captain Evening's team, now referred to as “the Odds”, was becoming known to the authorities, who bade them to look into the “reverse robberies” plaguing the city. (COMIC: Redistribution) Shortly after this incident, they were even called to England by Scotland Yard to deal with an “odd” situation, the invasion of a city by irritating but non-violent Insect People. (COMIC: Battle of Britain) Extending their stay in England, they were joined by a new member, the Blue Knight. (COMIC: Encore)
The group, now including the Blue Knight, returned to New York thanks to Jenny's shifting abilities. They soon had to leap back into action to protect the Mayor and (seemingly) Captain Perfect from a giant robot attacker called Ultimatron. They had little success, however, and it was Centennia, hitherto a solo hero and currently Captain Perfect's girlfriend, who swooped in to defeat the entity. She also discovered that the attack had actually been arranged by Captain Perfect to boost his own fame, leading her to break up with Captain Perfect. In the aftermath of the battle, Captain Evening expressed his sympathies to her concerning Perfect's betrayal, and suggested that she join the Odds herself; she agreed. The Odds organised a superhuman party at the Fortress of Evening to unwind, (COMIC: Meanwhile, On Earth) which was the occasion of their first meeting with the symbiote-augmented British metahuman, Kate Five. (COMIC: Symbiote Surprise)
Losing Jenny
Shortly after the Captain Perfect scandal, Armstrong discovered that Armagedda was back on Earth. The Odds travelled to the building in Queens where she was apparently making her lair, only to walk into a trap organised by “Evil Cloak”, who had assembled all of the Odds' past enemies. Evil Cloak dramatically revealed that she and the Jenny the Odds knew were one and the same, and that she was not Jenny Everywhere, but Jenny Nowhere. After a battle broke out between heroes and villains, Nowhere reactivated Doctor Brain's Portal and tried to summon a powerful demonic entity, Gazoom, to do her bidding. However, Gazoom, angry at being disturbed, instead swallowed Jenny whole before returning whence he came. In the wake of this simultaneous loss to both their teams, the heroes and villains agreed to go their separate ways for the day with no further fighting. Back at the Fortress of Evening, Centennia confessed she did not feel up to being part of a team full-time, while Armstrong expressed his interest in taking a vacation from his superhero activities to take the Blue Knight and Merv on a sight-seeing road trip. As the assembled team was about to share a toast to the great times they'd shared, however, they received a call from the Mayor warning them about a monster downtown. (COMIC: Meanwhile, In Queens)
Against the Cosmic Solution
When Robot Madison summoned as many superheroes as she could to New York City to stop the Cosmic Solution robot, “Captain Evening and the Odds” were the second group to arrive, (COMIC: Journey Out Of Misery) having been alerted by the Mayor. (COMIC: Meanwhile, In Queens) With the help of Madison, the other heroes already on the scene, reforming mad scientist Hank Richards, and even Glow Girl, (COMIC: Journey Out Of Misery) a retired hero who had previously declined to join the team on a regular basis, (COMIC: Glow Girl!) the Odds were able to begin draining power from the robot and cause it to shrink. However, much of their progress was undone by a more experienced team, the Protectors, who barged in and refused to listen to their observations, attacking the robot head-on and consequently feeding it enough power to grow to gigantic size again. They then bore witness to the destruction of the entire Protectors team by the Solution. In the end, the Solution agreed to leave the Earth of its own accord after being called off by another agent of the Cosmic Order. (COMIC: Journey Out Of Misery)
Vacation on Kokotomo Island
With the real Jenny Everywhere having coincidentally arrived in Reality Z-25 31-H on the same day her her impersonator died to Gazoom, (COMIC: Meanwhile, In Queens) it was in the company of Jenny Everywhere once again — and properly this time — that the Odds were invited by Mr Montibar to the magical Kokotomo Island for a supernatural vacation where their dreams would literally come true. They agreed, with even Centennia coming along. After the Odds split off to enjoy their various fantasies come true, the skeleton crew of Captain Evening, Armstrong Fatbuckle, Merv the Griffin and the Blue Knight eventually returned home together by plane while Centennia and Jenny, leaving the team for good, stayed behind to enjoy the Island's amenities a while longer. (COMIC: Tales To Behold Halloween Cameo Caper 2014)
Road trip
The Odds, now reduced to Captain Evening, Armstrong Fatbuckle, Merv the Griffin and the Blue Knight, finally went on the low-key road-trip that Armstrong had initially suggested, trying to forget their troubles and simply enjoy life, camping out in the countryside at night. They travelled in the Odd Mobile, a van emblazoned with the name of “Odd Mobile” and Captain Evening's moon symbol. Eventually, however, during one particular pit-stop near a creek, they ran into trouble as a duo of corrupt, drug-trafficking policemen knocked out Armstrong, Merv and the Knight with tranquiliser darts and took them prisoners, afraid that the heroes would meddle in their trafficking.
They missed the Captain, however, who had gotten knocked out as part of an unrelated accident while away from the group; teaming up with the young, naïve and surprisingly athletic Sheriff, who knew nothing of her subordinates' corruption, he found the drug-dealers' lair and helped his friends break out, after which they easily overpowered the villains — while their leader Druggo had previously claimed to have superpowers, he turned out to be delusional. The Odds then went for a midnight swim in the creek with the Sheriff, who needed some time to relax and rethink things. As he advised her on how to deal with this betrayal, the Captain realised that he needed to take his own advice to her to ultimately “just keep going”, and decreed that the Odds should return to New York as there was “work to be done”. (COMIC: Road Trip Of No Return)
Returning to New York, they joined with numerous other heroes to offer their help to Professor Madison in her work rebuilding after the damage dealt to the city by the Solution. (PROSE: Epilogue to Destruction)
Chasing shadows
When the Shadow Queen attacked New York City, Captain Evening, Armstrong Fatbuckle, Merv the Griffin and the Blue Knight responded almost immediately, but did not fare well in their first battle with the Queen's shadow-warriors, who were intangible when they tried to punch them, but very much capable of dealing damage to flesh-and-blood opponents. Only the setting of the sun brought an end to the fight, forcing the Queen to retreat lest her shadows dissolve into the darkness of the night. However, the Captain managed to hurl a tracking device at her.
In the middle of the night, the Odds followed the tracking device to the Queen's house, where they distracted her by cutting off her electricity. In the confusion, they stole her Shadow-Ray and, getting Professor Madison to walk them through it over video-phone, reprogrammed it to create shadow-beings loyal to them rather than the Queen. When they attacked the Queen and her shadows openly, it was with the help of the Shadow Odds, living versions of their own shadows, who handily beat the Queen's warriors. After she surrendered and was taken into custody, the Odds kept her Flying Platform, but were left wondering who she really was and where she had come, unsure whether they'd ever get the answers. (COMIC: Chasing Shadows)
Foiling Hexia
When the supervillain and witch Hexia took over the Channel 6 studios midway through a special edition of Hero Hour, Captain Evening, who was the programme's special guest, was incapacitated and kept trapped by Hexia with the other hostages. After they were alerted to the situation by the Commissioner, it fell to Armstrong Fatbuckle, Merv the Griffin and the Blue Knight to rescue him and the others, forced to plan on their own without the Captain's strategic guidance. The Knight and Armstrong snuck in in disguise, while Merv waited for an opportune moment to burst in through a window. In the ensuing fight, while the other two did the heavy lifting, Armstrong focused on untying the Captain. Hexia nearly escaped in a helicopter, but was stopped at the last moment by freshly-minted heroine Jung-La, the identity chosen by the woman they'd met as a Sheriff in their road-trip. While Armstrong and Merv finished taking care of Hexia, the Captain, back in uniform and using his Skycicle, saved Jung-La from a nasty fall caused by the risk she'd taken to stop Hexia from escaping.
The clean-up, during which the Captain complimented the other three Odds for their resourcefulness in his absence (with the Blue Knight declaring that they had but “tried to make [the Captain] proud”), and allowed Jung-La to join the team, was cut short when the Commissioner called the Odds' attention to the New Protectors' latest broadcast, which announced that they had essentially declared martial law on New York, and furthermore, that independent superheroes would now be considered criminals. (COMIC: Season of the Witch)
Symbiote entanglements
At some subsequent point, Centennia rejoined the roster of the Odds. This iteration of the team was relaxing on the roof one day when they received a visit from their old friend Kate Five, who, unbeknownst to them, was under the mental control of a villainous symbiote. After getting the drop of Armstrong Fatbuckle out of sight of the other Odds and stuffing his disassembled bones into a filing cabinet, she convinced the rest to play a drinking game with a bottle she'd brought, which was actually drugged. Due to Centennia being very good at poker, she ended up as the last Odd standing, and, figuring out that Kate was up to no good, she managed to stop her with the help of Armstrong's disembodied arm (which had managed to escape from the storage unit), knocking her into the bell of the Fortress of Evening's belltower, whose sound cause the symbiote to separate itself from Kate's body. The Odds took care of Kate and, once she woke up, made it clear to her that they didn't blame her for the actions she'd undertaken under the symbiote's control. However, they were unable to locate and capture the symbiote, and, unbeknownst to them, it possessed Kate again almost immediately after she said her goodbyes and left the Fortress. (COMIC: Symbiote Surprise)
| Recurring elements of The Cosmic Beholder | ||||||||||
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