Today's page of the OCDictionary is about a comic book series that showed super-heroes fighting a war in the future.
The series was called Strikeforce Morituri, originally put out by Marvel Comics back in 1986. The Strikeforce is a group of warriors who gain super-powers in order to battle the alien force, The Horde, that is trying to overrun Earth. Morituri comes from the Latin phrase "Morituri te salutamus", which means 'We who are about to die salute you'. That phrase was extremely apt, since the process that gave the characters their powers would kill them within a year.
That leads us to the sobering thought...If there was a war of the type that you firmly believed in, would you be willing to definitely give up your life in an effort to stop this war? Keep in mind, you wouldn't have any control over what powers you had. You might be able to create neurotoxins out of your skin or shoot energy beams out of your eyes, or you might have the power to mow the lawn perfectly. One person even ended up with the ability to make roses bloom! For that ability, she gave up any life at all beyond the tenative deadline.
The team drew from comic books as an obvious source. The members of the Strikeforce wore costumes and took super-hero names, in an effort to increase public support and morale. There was The Garden, which was based on the X-Men's Danger Room, used as an effort to make their powers manifest themselves.
The series was an interesting mix, although it was definitely hard to realize that the characters that you were coming to enjoy being with were going to be gone within 12 issues. Yes, this was real time, not Marvel time. Twelve issues were the most that any powered character would appear in, since the Morituri Effect would cause them to die within that time period. While that is a down side, it also causes the creators of the comic to make the most of them while they can...making each character come across as a three-dimensional character rather than just another body.
By the end of the 31-issue run, the war was over and there was a steady cast. They also appeared in a five-issue mini-series called Electric Undertow. But this could be an idea that would be interesting to see revamped and revived today. If you get a chance to read them, you might find a new enjoyment.
