"pretender: a specially trained and adapted individual capable of learning and mastering any skill upon exposure, artificially created child geniuses displaying specific genetic markers, they are abducted from their parents and assigned to the centre. there they are raised, trained and their talents exploited for think tank and experimentation purposes. one has escaped.....

there are pretenders amongst us."

Welcome screen at the Official Pretender web site
 

For the past four years the Hervey Bay Branch of the Wold Newton Research Institute have been carefully monitoring the activities of an individual known as Jarod. Information from a source that cannot be disclosed for the safety of said source, have shown that Jarod is indeed a pretender.

This source also sheds light upon the organisation known as the Centre especially in the hitherto unknown origins of that organisation and its specific ties to the extended family tree known as the Wold Newton family

The source has revealed that Jarod and his brother Kyle were both abducted in 1963, Jarod is four, Kyle around two. They are but two of the seven subjects for a pretender research project known only as REDBOOK. The other children in this project seem to include Timmy, Dannie, Dara Andrews, Mr Lyle and an international terrorist known only as the Chameleon. An eighth file on Miss Parker has also been discovered. It is possible that Miss Parker was to be used as the control for all experiments on the other seven.

The subjects were all taken away from their families and taught to develop their talents. It appears that only Jarod and Kyle were natural Pretenders, the others received drug treatments to bring these talents to the fore with limited success. The pretender talent appears to be the swift and total learning of any skill they come in contact with. Jarod has been able to successfully pass himself off as a plastic surgeon, a doctor, a police officer, a gynaecologist and numerous other professions after a couple of days research. Jarod on one occasion mastered the perfect golf game in just 56 minutes.

Timmy, in an adverse reaction to the drugs and experiments by Mr Raines, has his personality totally wiped and he became an empath known as Angelo.

Dannie manifested a second evil personality known as Einnad as a result of experiments by Dr William Raines into creating an evil pretender.

The man known as Mr Lyle was the twin brother of Miss Parker who was abducted at birth by Dr Raines. Lyle was then adopted out through the NuGenesis Family Group (more on them later) to Mr and Mrs Lyle Bowman and named Robert. Lyle Bowman abused his adopted son and locked and chained him in a woodshed. Mr Lyle has been implicated in at least five murders as well as the framing of his adopted father for the first murder. New evidence has also suggested that he may be a cannibal. [1] It also appears that his placement with the abusive Bowmans was also the work of Dr Raines.

Miss Parker, on the other hand, was raised in the Centre by her father after the apparent death of her mother Catherine Parker nee Jamison. After college Miss Parker was employed by the Centre and worked in a number of departments. Her current assignment is the capture of Jarod. It appears that Miss Parker might be the Control for the pretender project.

Dr William Raines who wished to create a sociopath raised Kyle. Raines was had the most success with Kyle until Kyle was reunited with his brother and shown there was a better way. Kyle was shot and killed by Mr Lyle During an attempt to capture Jarod by the Centre, and his heart was then used to save the life of a young boy

Jarod, thankfully, was raised under the mentoring of Sydney and seems to have suffered none of these psychological traumas. However Jarod did discover that the simulations he was doing for the Centre were not being used for the betterment of Mankind as he was told but rather for evil ends such as stopping a federal witness from testifying against a crime lord.

Jarod then escaped to seek redemption and his family. He uses his skills to help victims of abuses of power. His mentor, Sydney, and childhood friend, Miss Parker, along with computer whiz Broots have been assigned to recapture Jarod.

Jarod has discovered that his parents went to the NuGenesis Family Group for some IVF treatment, which lead to the birth of the couple s three children, Jarod, Kyle and Emily. Emily was born after the taking of Jarod and Kyle and their parents, using the names Charles and Margaret, were on the run to avoid the heartache of losing yet another child.

Jarod also discovered during his time at NuGenesis that the Centre was trying to create another pretender. The young boy Davy Simkins was abducted by the Centre but was rescued and returned to his family by Jarod.

Jarod later found out his father was in the Air Force and narrowly missed him when he called himself Major Charles. This would suggest that Charles was not his first name as originally thought but rather his surname.

The Charles visits to NuGenesis produced in a way two other children that they were unaware of. It appears that Major Charles sperm was used to impregnate Mrs Parker whom records indicate is in fact the sister of his wife. This was an attempt to create another Pretender. Mr Raines raised the child of this pregnancy, Ethan ill-treating him, seeking once again to create a killer.

Margaret's ova were used for a project known as Gemini, which sought to clone Jarod. The ova were implanted with Jarod s DNA to minimise the chance of rejection. In 1985 this was successful and a clone of Jarod with all his abilities was born. Jarod was able to free his clone. As the clone fled in the care of Major Charles, Jarod was recaptured. He quickly escaped again and continues to help the weak and abused.

Jarod on three occasions has helped the Violent Crimes Task force and it s profilers. [2]

All of this is of course public knowledge. Upon further reading of the files amazing discoveries were made. It had been previously thought that Mr Parker founded the Centre in the late 1950 s but this appears not to be the case. Dr Clark Savage Snr founded the Centre in the 1920 s after his meeting with Hugo Danner in the Yucatan.

It would appear that the meeting between the two men was accidental but it now seems that Savage, using the name Professor Daniel Hardin, was deliberately seeking out Danner. Indeed Savage Snr can be shown to be in contact with a number of his remarkable relatives such as Professor Challenger, Hareton Ironcastle, Jimmy Valentine, Arsene Lupin, Sherlock Holmes, Richard Wentworth, Dr Thorndyke, Craig Kennedy, Ned Land, Sexton Blake, Bruce Clarke Wildman, Sim Carter and the Hardin, Blaze Fog Clan (as suggested by his alias of Daniel Hardin).

In fact, the records indicate that to legally substantiate his claim to the title of Lord Greystoke over his legitimate brother, Savage had researched his family tree. (What came of this plot can be seen in The Adventure of the Priory School by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

What Savage discovered was that a number of his relatives had remarkable talents, which appeared to proliferate after his great grandparents (the Third Duke and his wife), and their friends were riding in Wold Newton in 1795. Using his knowledge of genetics Savage was able to deduce the effects of the ionisation caused by the meteorite. He may well have used this knowledge in his selection of bride, for his plan to create a superman to make up for his criminal acts hinged upon the child being able to be able to become one.

However until Savage s meeting with Danner, and his tale of his father s injections to artificially create a superman, Savage thought that the creation of a superman could only be achieved by luck (and maybe some careful breeding) [3]

Savage returned to America and established a research facility in Blue Cove, Delaware. This facility called the Savage Centre for Genetic Research was established to better humanity and to study the Wold Newton Mutations (though other such meteorite strikes were discovered). The Centre (as the title was quickly whittled down to) also made a number of advances in the treatment of infertility [4]. These advances were then used in their satellite agency the NuGenesis Family Clinic
 

Through the early experiments of the centre one of the mutations caused by the ionisation became apparent this was the so-called Pretender gene. Savage determined that this gene was present in nearly all his relatives and was dominant to varying degrees. [5]

The Centre continued its work after the death of Clark Savage Snr in 1931 and made numerous advances in infertility treatments and genetic research under the guidance of Clark Savage Jnr

Then in 1948 Doc Savage vanished and all the funding to the Centre stopped and a new group took over the control and funding of the Centre. This new group was called the Triumvirate [6]. They quickly took over the Centre and its operations. They then took Savage Snr s research and began to follow an abandoned strand of research where Savage had considered drug therapy to activate latent pretender genes. Then they began to track down the carriers of this gene it was rapidly discovered that the therapy was unsuccessful in adult candidates.

So they decided to begin experiments on children, following a number of the techniques used by Savage Snr in the raising of his son and dubbed the project Redbook.

The drug therapies had a number of side effects, such as the creation of multiple personalities or the wiping of the existing personality. But the two subjects, Jarod and Kyle, were a complete success. All the test subjects, except Bobbie Lyle, were raised in isolation under the care of scientists.
 

As was stated earlier there were eight subjects in the Redbook Project. All eight were descended from various Wold Newton lineages.

As stated earlier Jarod and Kyle s parents hid under the names of Charles and Margaret but those were merely aliases. Their father was Major Nick Charles Jnr, a former air force pilot and medal winner and son of Nick and Nora Charles. The files indicate that the Charles family was from Greece and originally had the surname Charlibredies [6] but that was whittled down and Americanised when the family immigrated to America. The files go on to show that that Nick s mother was the second child of Aspasia Stavros, daughter of Sir William Clayton. [8]

Jarod s mother, Margaret, was using her middle name and the files indicate that her true name was in fact Dorothy Margaret Charles nee Jamison making her the sister of Catherine Parker. The Jamison sisters are the great-granddaughters of Sylvester Knight (Lancelot Silver/ Paladin) Their mother was the sister of Emma Peel nee Knight s father. This accounts for the strong resemblance between Emma Peel and Catherine Parker and Catherine s daughter Angel Parker. Angel modelled herself on her famous cousin but due to the influence of the Centre she is more like an evil version of Mrs Peel. [9] Miss Parker and her twin brother Mr Lyle were born on January 3, 1960

The child formerly known as Timmy and now called Angelo was also born in 1960 and according to the records his great grandfather was the adventurer known as Ludwig Horace Holly. It appears that Holly s recounting of his life in the first chapter of SHE left out a portion of the truth. Holly tells of a young lady who falsely led him to believe that she loved him and abandoned him when his inheritance went elsewhere. What Holly failed to mention, as it was to painful for him, was that he was married to the young lady and she left him and returned to her family in America whilst she was pregnant. It is unclear if Holly was aware of the pregnancy. The woman had a boy in 1858 and raised him on her own under the name of Jonathan Ivey and told people she was a widow. Jonathan according to the records had one son Philip in 1888. In 1917, just before he left for the First World War, Philip married Molly Hart but it was not until 1929 that the couple conceived a child, two in fact, twins Paul and Seymour. [10] Paul and Seymour served in the Second World War after which they remained in the military and served in Korea. Paul married Mary Dillon after the Second World War and the couple unsuccessfully tried to have children until they went to NuGenesis in 1958 and in 1960 they finally blessed with a child they named Timmy. At age four Timmy was abducted and taken to the centre where his personality was wiped and he was renamed Angelo.

The Records indicate that Paul's brother Seymour and his wife of three years were expecting a baby at that time. (The form asked about the fertility of other family members to see if there was genetic pattern to infertility) Further Centre research shows that the child was called Dustin. Dusty, as he preferred to be called, went on to become a meteorologist. He joined a group of tornado chasers and in 1996 was part of the first team that was able to collect data from the inside of a twister.

The file for Dara Andrews reveals that she was descended from Artemus Gordon. During the period 1876 to 1885 Artemus was married and had two sons, Walter and Clifford. After the death of his wife Artemus left the two boys with his brother Clifford. The younger Clifford ran away and joined a circus as an animal trainer and adopted the stage name of Cliff Chance and later married the trapeze artist. Their son George Chance became one of the greatest magicians ever, but Chance was able to master other skills taught to him by the other members of the circus such as make up, knife fighting and throwing, ventriloquism. Chance later used these skills to fight crime as the Green Ghost. The Green Ghost costume is make up that resembles a skull (which looks rather similar to Lon Chaney s Phantom of the Opera make up) Chance, like Norgil, uses the tricks of magic to fight crime. Chance was assisted by Glen Saunders (Chance s twin used to create perfect alibis), his lady friend Merry White, a dwarf Tiny Tim (one wonders if Tim s last name is Loveless) [11]. Like the Batman, the Green Ghost operates with the approval of Commissioner Edward Standish.

Chance dropped out of sight in 1944 and the Green Ghost never appeared again. Dara s file reveals that he married Merry White. After a number of years of trying to get pregnant the couple went to NuGenesis and was one of the first recipients of their advanced IVF program. Dara was the result of this and she was abducted in 1960 at the age of four. Catherine Parker later rescued Dara, but not having access to the files in SL 27, was not able to return her to her natural parents but was adopted by the Andrews. Dara went on to a distinguished stage career. The Centre murdered Dara in 1996.

Dannie as was stated earlier went mad and created a second identity Einnad. This mental instability was hereditary, as his great great grandfather was Dr Arliss Loveless who prior to his accident circa 1865 had impregnated an Irish prostitute in New Orleans. After the birth of a daughter the prostitute moved to New York to start a new life. The daughter then married a man of Scottish descent by the name of Williams. The couple tried for many years but their only child was a change-of-life baby and the couple named him Race. Race Williams unfortunately inherited his grandfather s mental instability but none of his intellect. Williams had no interest in the law and his version of justice was usually terminal. Williams in the course of his career had an affair with The Flame, the Girl with the Criminal Mind, who was a cousin to Hans Von Hammer, The Enemy Ace though the family name had been anglicised to Hammer. The product of this union was adopted out to a couple named Danger who named the child Michael. Mike Danger as he was originally known latter took his mother s surname of Hammer. Hammer grew up to be just like his biological father, and became a private eye though he was much more intelligent than his father. Hammer worked closely with his secretary Velda and was deeply in love with her. But in 1955, Velda disappeared and was presumed dead Hammer hit the skids he quit being a detective and for seven years was drunk in the gutter. During this time Hammer came across a prostitute who looked like Velda and slept with her. The child of this union was Dannie who was put up for adoption with the NuGenesis family group who tested the boy and discovered that he had the pretender gene. They forwarded the boy and what scant information they had to the Centre who then tracked down the rest of his family.
    Lamentably all information on the Chameleon and Davy Simkins appears to have been lost in the explosion that destroyed SL 27 in 1998. [12]

Footnotes:
[1] The reason for this is that he has a tattoo of a snake eating it s own tail called an ourobous, which in Cambodia is the symbol for cannibalism. It has come to my attention that the same symbol is the symbol of the Millennium group. It is possible that Lyle might be a member of that group. (Dana Scully as seen in the X Files episode Never Again has the same tattoo)

[2] These being Dr Sam Waters (not her real name) and Rachel Burke both of whom display a talent for seeing into the minds of killers similar to that of Frank Black and his daughter Jordan.

[3] Al Schroeder has suggested that Danner is in fact Clark Kent (Superman) and his talents are the result of being an alien not through a serum. Given Savage's research into drug treatments it appears that this may not be the case See also Dennis Power's Aliens Among Us for a different Kryptonian connection for Hugo Danner

[3a] One wonders if Dr Erskine (aka Reinstein) accidentally stumbled on a weaker version of this formula in his creation of Captain America.

[4] The Centre is currently some twenty years ahead of other researchers in the field of cloning (even then it took 289 attempts to clone a human) It is reasonable to conclude that a similar lead would be evident in other areas of research.
[5] The effects of this gene would include: the uncanny ability at disguise shown by Savage Jnr, Bulldog Drummond, Richard Wentworth, Kent Allard, Sherlock Holmes, etc.; the planning skills of Moriarty and others; Tarzan s learning of English through the written word alone and linguistic ability of other relatives as well as a number of other skills.

[6] It is currently unclear if this is a splinter group of one of the groups known as the Nine although one of their headquarters is in Uganda. Also the membership of the Triumvirate is unknown except for the now deceased Mutumbo the Mad Zulu, though it is possible that Mr Parker, current head of the Centre, and Mr Raines might be members.

[7] There are reports that this is Nick's first name but those reports are in error.

[8] For the descendants of the first child see Win Eckert's The Malevolent Moriartys

[9] For more information on the rest of the Silver family see Dennis Power's All that Glitters is not Gold: The Silvers

[10] See Jess Nevins Reach For your Genealogical Charts Stranger: An Extraordinary family of the Wold West for more information on the Hart s. Mary's brother was the grandfather of Jonathon Hart (see Hart to Hart)

[11] For more information see Dennis Power's Evil Comes in Small Packages: The Loveless Brothers

[12] This is not entirely true there was a burnt scrap of paper found with the words lint and below that re but the meaning of this is so unclear that nothing can be determined from that

Acknowledgements

This article was partially based on a suggestion that Doc Savage s father used fertility clinics to create super heroes by Al Schroeder. Used with permission. Many thanks.

Also thanks to Dennis Power for his suggestions and encouragement
I have also used Tony Sparafucile s connection between Race Williams and Mike Hammer which first appeared in the 1978 preface to the reprint of MURDER FROM THE EAST and mentioned on the Thrilling Detective Web site

Sources Used

Eckert, Win, AN EXPANSION OF PHILIP JOSE FARMER'S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE

Farmer, Philip Jose, DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE

Farmer, Philip Jose, TARZAN ALIVE

Haggard, H. Rider, SHE

Hutchinson, Don Thrilling Heroes of the Forties: The Masked Detective, The Crimson Mask, The Purple Scar and the Ghost! in Van Hise, James (Ed) PULP MASTERS

LOIS DAILY PLANET PRETENDER EPISODE GUIDE

The Millennium FAQ

Nevins, Jess, PULP AND ADVENTURE HEROES OF THE PRE-WAR YEARS
 

Power, Dennis THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE

THE PRETENDER TV series 1996 -2000

PROFILER TV Series 1996 - 2000

Schroeder, Al SCHROEDER'S SPECULATIONS

THRILLING DETECTIVES web site entries on Race Williams and Mike Hammer.

TWISTER movie 1996

WILD WILD WEST, movie 1999
 

Return to the Table of Contents

© 2001 Brad Mengel