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unelected position meant that the F*O*O*J was poised for potentially massive change. And while many people had assumed that Festus Piltdown III, HKA the Flying Squirrel, was destined for the DOO post which was the de facto commander-in-chieftancy of the F*O*O*J, there was a surprise buried beneath the election field like a land mine in a miniature golf course.
    If the F*O*O*J had been a vehicle for national and even global change, the F*L*A*C was the front axis of that vehicle’s wheels. So the candidate—or candidates—in our therapeutic sessions were in desperate need of a good greasing.

    Back Issues: The Origins of the F*O*O*J

    F orged during America’s now mythical Golden Age of Heroism to counter the threats of rum-running, communism, juvenile delinquency, and marijuana, the (then) Fraternal Order of Justice was Earth’s foremost and finest fighting force of fury. Delivering the decisive blow against the German war machine following the Soviet invasion of Berlin, the F*O*O*J became a planetary icon for justice and freedom. Its founding members’ names are synonymous with glory: Omnipotent Man, Iron Lass, Lady Liberty, Gil Gamoid and the N-Kid, Captain Manifest Destiny, and their brilliant, mysterious, mystical mentor, the incredible Hawk King.
    Returning to America and the expansive East Coast metropolis of Seagull City, the F*O*O*J moved into its first legendary headquarters, the Mando Mansion, and began recruiting among the nation’s growing ranks of costumed avengers.
    Thus began the F*O*O*J’s Silver Age, whose new stars would shine as brightly as the originals— Siren, the Evolutionist, Flying Squirrel, and Chip Monk —defending our country and our planet against some of the worst scourges imaginable: Nemesaur, the Leninoids, Codzilla, Black Mamba, Standing Buffalo, Cosmicus and the Hordes of Entropy…truly an unlimited series.
    But in the goggled eyes of some, the atomic-powered America of the Silver Age was mutating into something unrecognizable. Gone were the neat pleats and fedoras of the founding era of the F*O*O*J. Now rock and roll, the Civil Rights and women’s movements, miniskirts, hippies, and drugs were bubbling out of the gutters and recoloring the splash pages of our country.
    Like most institutions, the conservative F*O*O*J resisted any change until change was forced upon it, mandated not only by the pervasive influence of altered American mores, but by legal action. Gone was the adjective fraternal because of the Siren’s embittering lawsuit; the word was replaced by fantastic, so the F*O*O*J’s heralding acronym could be preserved.
    Other changes—some with far more sweeping outcomes—were on the way. Warlock War II saw the magical relocation of Seagull City to the West Coast and its integration into the city of Los Ditkos. The war’s destruction of Mando Mansion led Festus Piltdown III to construct a replacement F*O*O*J headquarters, the glittering gold-silver Fortress of Freedom, which remains the leading tourist attraction of downtown Bird Island in Los Ditkos. Perhaps most contentiously, as a recipient of federal security contracts under President Nixon, the organization could not by the early 1970s continue to receive such funding if it remained all-white. Racial integration of the F*O*O*J introduced America to such now-classic crimefighters as the Spook and La Cucaracha.
    Colossal figures were undergoing colossal change.

    The Bitter Aftertaste in the Chalice of Victory

    B ut there’s only so much change any organization can take before its primary-colored tunic begins washing out and splitting at the seams.
    Integration, popular demands that the F*O*O*J apply itself to new threats such as environmental devastation and domestic abuse, and increasing public concern about due process and the legal loopholeism that allowed superheroes to operate meant that the legitimacy of the F*O*O*J’s mission—if not its very existence—was in question.
    But no one, least of all the