Captain Trips (Wild Cards)
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Captain Trips, also known as Dr. Mark Meadows, is a character from the Wild Cards series of books. Meadows is a renowned biochemist and a burned-out hippie, with the ability to use various drugs (usually derivations of psychoactive drugs such as LSD) to transform into several other forms, each with their own powers and their own individual personalities. Trips himself and several of his alternate forms would be considered Aces in the lexicon of the Wild Cards universe, though a few of his "friends" (as he terms them) could be classified as Jokers. It is theorized that since all Meadow's "friends" and their powers are ultimately derived from Meadows himself, that he is essentially the penultimate manifestation of the Wild Card virus.
Meadows was infected with the Wild Cards virus in 1970, when his desire to be more appealing to his childhood crush, who had become a hippie, combined with a hit of LSD, caused his mutation to release the first of his "friends", the Radical, at a war protest rally; the presence of the LSD in his system when the infection took hold created a dependence on a chemical influence to fully activate his mutation. Much of his life since has been spent in trying to achieve the specific formulation of LSD that created the Radical, who is to date the most powerful expression of Meadows' Ace ability, and he achieved a degree in biochemistry to that end. His other "friends" are the results of attempts to recreate that formula; Meadows often keeps preparations of the specific combinations that create each "friend" ready in case they're needed. Each of these preparations is a different color, kept in glass vials in a leather pouch that Meadows carries with him. Typically, the manifestation of each "friend" only lasts about an hour. Prolonged and repeated use of the Moonchild formula during Trips' sojourn in modern day Vietnam produced insomnia, nervous strain, physical exhaustion, and a kind of psychic bleed over where his personality would become garbled with hers.
It is stated in the Wild Cards book Aces High that Dr. Meadows was once "considered the most brilliant biochemist in the world, the Einstein of his field", but at some point vanished from the public eye amid rumors of divorce (from the aforementioned childhood crush), "personality deterioration" and drug use. From Meadow's addled behavior in later years as Captain Trips, it could be assumed that the drugs he uses to "call his friends" have effects on Meadows' normal form similar to those documented in long-term psychoactive drug users.
In the more modern times depicted in the books, Meadows runs the Cosmic Pumpkin, an "organic remedy" shop, and cares for his daughter Sprout, apparently also a victim of the Wild Card virus, whose mutation limited her intelligence to roughly that of a four-year-old child, though physically she is an adult. He created the "secret identity" of Captain Trips (described as an outfit resembling that of Uncle Sam, but in psychedelic colors) solely on the logic of, "I'm an Ace so I gotta have a secret identity, you know?", despite the fact that in the Wild Cards books, most characters that have had secret IDs were ultimately "outed" to the public. He has expressed to Dr. Tachyon a desire to use his "friends" to "fight evil" and otherwise help people.
The "friends" of Captain Trips include:
- Moonchild - Moonchild is a tall, exotic looking yet shy and polite Asian beauty. She is graceful, with a well-muscled form and long black hair. She wears a skintight black costume, complete with gloves and boots. On her chest is black and white yin-yang symbol. A similarly patterned half-mask covers her face. A master martial artist, Moonchild is stronger than a normal human and much faster. She is also able to make the dark her home, and can become nearly invisible as well as teleport amid the shadows.
- Jumpin' Jack Flash - Flash is a small man with a devilish grin. He has red hair, a handsome face and wears an orange bodysuit, open down to the navel, trimmed in red and yellow flames. His ace powers include the ability create and control fire. He can fire bolts of flame, create a flaming rope or net (that will not burn its captives), fly and extinguish fires. At times, he's been known to create and play flaming guitars. Flash is something of a glory hound and womanizer that wishes he could get out and about on a more permanent basis.
- Cosmic Traveler - His actual appearance is of a bald, stoop shouldered man with blue skin, a thin chest, arms and legs and a slight pot belly. Among his ace powers is the ability to change his shape, so he normally looks much more imposing. Traveler has a number of powers, including desolidification, invisibility, flight and a powerful will. He's also a coward, and is prone to flee from any threatening situation.
- Starshine - His costume consists of a yellow body stocking with an orange sunburst on the chest, and green trunks, gloves, and folded over boots. His powers are the manipulation of light itself, allowing him to generate bolts of pure light energy, create a protective field, fly, survive in space and transform himself into a beam of light. He is very arrogant and opinionated and will quite gladly lecture everyone on the evils of everything. Eventually Starshine "dies", nearly robbing Meadows of the ability to speak for a time.
- Aquarius - Aquarius has grayish skin and is bald. His primary power is the ability to turn into a 20' long dolphin. His humanoid form is quite strong, but must remain wet or he begins to suffer. Aquarius is a somewhat unpleasant fellow, who does not like any land dwellers and has a particular distaste for people from whaling nations.
- Monster - Monster is a giant horned joker with fangs, scaled skin, inhuman strength, and a destructive energy blast. Only seen once when Trips, under great emotional distress, used a tainted batch of his powders in an attempt to protect his daughter. Monster reveled in his superior size, physical strength, and the destruction he could unleash. Described in a nightmare sequence as having an erect penis the size of a city bus, Monster enjoyed inflicting pain on those smaller and weaker than himself.
- Radical - Trips' "ultimate" form, Radical has all of the other forms' powers. He is a youthful blonde-haired man clad only in jeans and wearing a peace medallion. True to his name, the Radical can be quite violently militant, and constantly quotes 1960s Leftist rhetoric. It could be said that there are two Radicals, the first which appeared in 1970 and manifested only enhanced strength, speed, and agility, employing a peace symbol medallion on a silver chain as a weapon. The second Radical manifested decades later when Trips overdosed on a mixture of the powders that normally summoned individual "friends" and has yet to disappear, apparently retaining full control of all the various personas' powers and completely submerging Meadows' original personality.
- Rocky Raccoon - Only a rumored transformation, which Trips himself does not remember. According to Croyd Crenson, better known as the Sleeper and another ace with a taste for drugs, he and Trips once tested a new batch of acid Meadows had concocted. During the subsequent trip Croyd swears Trips transformed into a giant human-sized, walking, talking raccoon. Whether this was a true manifestation of Trips' powers or a drug induced hallucination is uncertain.
In addition, each incarnation seems to embody some aspect of Mark Meadows' personality, for example Jumpin' Jack Flash embodies his extroversion and "machismo" where Moonchild is his anima and Starshine (who is prone to poetic monologues) embodies his sense of creativity and eloquence. When Starshine is killed, Mark temporarily loses the ability to speak and ever since has a feeling of part of him missing, and a loss of his sense of creativity being unable to express himself through painting or other forms of art. It is possible this loss is being healed, since Starshine briefly appeared alongside hundreds of unnamed "friends" to defeat Monster. Monster is possibly an expression of Meadows' id. Full of pain, lust, rage, and - at the root of these - fear, Monster is a manifestation of the dark impulses buried for decades deep inside the minds of good natured pacifists like Captain Trips.
Over the years, Meadows has devoted considerable time and research into determining the true origin/nature of his "friends". It is possible his prolonged drug use has produced the most sophisticated case of disassociative identity disorder ever known, except that in most cases of DID the personalities are not aware of one another. Trips' "friends" know of and often have antagonistic feelings towards one another. It is also possible his ace abilities somehow use the chemical trigger of psychoactive drugs to tap into alternate realities from which he draws them.
The Jumpin' Jack Flash persona has a near identical, though slightly older, non powered duplicate named J.J. Flash and met him once on a late night talk show. J.J. Flash is a lawyer, uninfected by the Wild Card, and has no idea why they appear so alike. Jumpin' Jack Flash is a fun-loving adventurer and shameless self-promoter that remembers another world full of costumed superheroes like himself from which he is "summoned" by Meadows.
The Cosmic Traveler persona's real name is Damon Strange, which is about all Meadows has been able to discover about him. It seems the "real" Damon Strange committed suicide the night Meadows first successfully used a new batch of powder to manifest Cosmic Traveler.
The Moonchild persona believes Captain Trips' "friends" are all real beings with their own lives to lead and karma to fulfill and that somehow Meadows' power has brought them all together.
Just prior to the first, and so far only, manifestation of Monster it was briefly observed that (barring Croyd's giant raccoon story) Trips had never really manifested any "friends" other than the elusive Radical and the later five he perfected his formulas for. However, after a violent rampage, Monster/Meadows was confronted and defeated within his own mind (or perhaps another dimension) by an army of infinite heroic personas led by the purple suited Captain Trips. These "friends" are all named after popular 1960s songs, except for Cosmic Traveler. Trips (and perhaps through him, creator Vic Milan) admits he got it wrong and should have called him Mystic Traveler. Jumpin' Jack Flash is named after the Rolling Stones song. The musical Hair, and thereby the Fifth Dimension, is represented twice with Starshine and Aquarius. Even the negative manifestation of Monster was named after a song by rock band Steppenwolf. Two theoretical friends Trips wondered about just before he became Monster might have been called Ramblin' Man (Allman Brothers) and Crown of Creation (Jefferson Airplane).
In the course of his career Trips has (with the help of his "friends") fought alongside the ace/rock star known as the Lizard King (Radical), participated in the raid on the Egyptian Freemasons of The Astronomer (Jumpin' Jack Flash), destroyed an asteroid headed for Earth (Starshine), defeated a genetically engineered Morakh soldier from Takis (Moonchild), impersonated President George Bush (Cosmic Traveler), traveled to the planet Takis and back, and even taken over the government of Vietnam. Currently, Trips is the Radical full time, having abdicated his position in the Vietnamese government and turned over guardianship of his daughter Sprout to his father, a retired Air Force general, so that he can more fully pursue his career as an ace hero. Little has been seen or heard from him since.
