Major Merlin

BACKGROUND

Arthur MacAndrews was born in Opal City in 1920. He was raised by kind, hard-working parents who lost everything in the stock market crash of 1929, but managed to scrape together a good life for Arthur and his older sister Pearl. They instilled a sense of responsibility in their kids, and at the age of 20, feeling compelled to fight the Nazi forces but with the USA still not involved in the war in Europe, Arthur returned to his mother's hometown in England, and enlisted with the Royal Army.

WARTIME

Arthur's superiors discovered his knack for infiltration and demolition, so he spent time dynamiting railroad trestles and reporting on troop movements. However, MacAndrews' true talents lay in a different kind of sabotage; he possessed an uncanny aptitude for foiling the plans of the Reich's occultists and magicians. Even as Hitler's forces became more powerful, and conquered more territory, thanks to their custody of the Spear of Destiny, dozens of their smaller plans would be thwarted in the early stages. Arthur McAndrews became a sort of "magic monkey-wrench," a one-man force for chaos in the service of the greater good.

By 1945, he had amassed a small collection of relics and talismans, taken as the spoils of war or discovered in his travels. Together with his uniform, which was altered to reflect no specific rank or even nationality, he gradually adopted the look of the "Mystery Men" who were operating back home in the USA, under orders from President Roosevelt to stay out of Europe, and away from the influence of the Spear. As he was a British soldier, and possessed no super-powers, MacAndrews was not obligated to obey.

THE FINAL BATTLE

As the war in Europe reached its conclusion, MacAndrews found himself once again face-to-face with Doktor Brechenzeit, his greatest enemy. As Brechenzeit stooped over ancient tomes in a Berlin warehouse and prepared to cast a spell as a last-ditch effort to preserve the Reich, MacAndrews crept through the shadows. Unable to prevent the spell's activation, MacAndrews chose to disrupt it directly. He grabbed Brechenzeit, and the two hurtled into the vortex of light created by the incomplete spell.

The official story is that Sgt. Maj. Arthur MacAndrews was lost in action that day; however, his body was recovered, and brought to the St. Kensington's military hospital facility in the English countryside, kept under close guard. MacAndrews was neither dead nor alive; clinically he appeared to remain in a coma for the next 65 years. Meanwhile, his spirit was wandering the astral plane.

THE LOST DECADES

He was visited at various times by the Phantom Stranger, Dr. Fate, the Spectre, Death of the Endless, and two of her siblings. Delirium took an interest in MacAndrews, and was disappointed when he declined the opportunity to go mad. Dream and MacAndrews conversed on two occasions, once over a very nice dinner, and MacAndrews spent some time wandering through the Soft Lands between dreaming and other realities. He ultimately devoted himself to meditation, and study of his own magical nature as well as the magic he had been able to bring with him. He watched some of the intervening Earth history unfold, once he gained the ability to see it; he saw his sister grow old, and spoke with her briefly in the dream she had the night before she died. While his body aged slowly in the waking world, MacAndrews' power grew, although never to the point where he could escape from limbo.

RECENT EVENTS

That would change, and suddenly, when Lex Luthor's exobyte blast sent the power-infused nanotech packets hurtling across the world. MacAndrews' body was touched by one, and while his guards looked on he was enveloped in a blinding light. When it receded, he appeared to be a man of perhaps 35 or 40, instead of 90, and in perfect health. He immediately asked for a cup of tea, and a shot of whiskey. St. Kensington's being a British facility, the tea was ready within 5 minutes. The base commander brought the whiskey personally.

After one of the more lengthy and complex debriefings in recent memory, MacAndrews officially retired from the army, and took a post as an independent contractor for MI6. With the huge and sudden increase in super-powered criminals, terrorists, and especially magic-users, it seems the Major's work is far from finished.