Vykin, somber member of The Forever People, is a “Finder,” one who “has the power to trace and reconstruct atomic patterns,” meaning, I reckon, the guy can sense where things have previously been and is able to detect such earlier presences by zapping beams out of his eyes which create a trace image. Like Mark Moonrider, Vykin also has a latent ability that doesn’t appear until late in the series: Magna-Power, which he uses without so much as a howdy-do against a gunman: it’s a kind of reverse-magnetism force field that repels metal and those that wield same… akin to Magneto, I guess.

Most of all though, Vykin is the loyal protector of the team’s beloved Mother Box (we’ll get to her), a kind of sentient computer that exhibits emotions (via pings) and endowed with the ability to call into this dimension a wonderful, spectacular, immensely powerful being… Fear not, friend, soon you will learn all…

Vykin is also a language major and possesses in his helmet an indicator connected to Mother Box, saying his “mind is so attuned to her waves,” but Vykin can also hear her without the helmet (which also, by the way, contains probing circuits that can detect gold).

The name description: Is Jack really being that blatant, relaying the obvious — Vykin has black skin — or might it be more subtle wordplay off the character’s name, an apparent derivation of “Viking”? I mean, like there’s Erik the Red, Thorstein the Red, The Red Viking (or did I make up that last one as my own comic book character?)… I imagine there’s not too many “…the Blacks” in Norse myth or history…

“Token” black characters were appearing all over network teevee at the time: Bill Cosby in I Spy, Nichelle Nichols’ “Uhura” in Star Trek, The Mod Squad‘s Linc Hayes, a nod by Hollywood towards the civil rights movement, with their otherwise lily-white fantasy world. So, why not comics?

But it’s important to note Jack created the first mainstream black comic book super-hero in this country — The Black Panther in the pages of The Fantastic Four — and he’d go on, in the very pages of The Forever People, to debut the first U.S. Asian super-hero, Sonny Sumo.

Gratuitous? Maybe. I’m more inclined to give J.K. the benefit of the doubt and believe the allusion of color with Vykin the Black is less due to skin pigmentation and more that he was a subterranean dweller on New Genesis before joining the team, from a black world, so to speak. But then, I’m a Kirbyhead, so whaddaya want!

We’ll start off with the roster rundown the (unofficial?) leader of The Forever People, All-American Doug Flutie lookalike Mark Moonrider, whose expertise seems to be to… ummm… lead! (Surnamed for then-Kirby assistant and now J.K. biographer, Mark Evanier? You are the judge!)

Moonrider appears to be Beautiful Dreamer’s default boyfriend (as indicated when Darkseid kindly zapped them together with his Omega Effect finder beams for a night at the theater on April 14, 1865, while other teammates were transported to other dates by their lonesome). He also sits in the foremost seat of their vehicle, barking orders and insults to Super-Cycle pilot Big Bear.

Mark, being head of a nonviolent group, is surprisingly adept at using destructive hand weapons, given his marksman ship destroying Happyland with a “few well placed shots”! He also possesses the “Megaton Touch,” which emanates from his fingertips, an ability with a range that can either cause severe shock or liquefy rock as needed (why Mark doesn’t call on this power in a slew of situations, who knows! And did I miss something or does M.M. suddenly get the Megaton Touch pretty late in the run, with no explanation?).

Mark Moonrider is the calm center of the group, consistently on-task in their quest to beat Darkseid to the Anti-Life Equation, and spokesman regarding their mission of peace. When handicapped boy Donnie laments their leaving, Mark has a lovely bit of advice:

“Donnie — Life is good! Live it for others — not against them! In that way, you will always be close to us!”