First Crisis Event of 1985

The First Crisis Event of 1985 is arguably the most important event of the First Age, as it affected the entire Earth, and saw the rise of a new era of superheroism. As All American, the man who had represented true heroism, had died four years prior, and supervillainy was on the rise thanks to the NCSF Breakout of 1981, the superheroic dream was seemingly at an end. However, this Crisis, as it came to be called, changed the face of superheroism forever.

The Road to Crisis
The First Crisis did not just come about, as some had speculated. Through thorough research, it has been discovered that multiple, unlinked past events led to the First Crisis. All of these unrelated events led to the Earth being polluted with many different energies, a figurative boiling pot of dangerous energies, leaking through the time/space matrix thanks to the life cycle of The Ever-Dark. The Crisis did not begin, however, until The Blade of Aeons was activated. In the years following the Da'Fay attack, the American government got more and more concerned with furthering interstellar travel, and combating those with such technology. As such, when a piece of technology fell into their laps with the capability to travel great distances, SHOTS was granted huge amounts of money to attempt a "first voyage". However, in the first attempt at a travel-able portal, no bigger than doorway, the Blade overloaded. You see, the Blade of Aeons uses peripheral energy of all types in the atmosphere to power its interdimensional rays, and because of the events of the past 30 years, the Earth was storing too much energy. As such, instead of opening one portal in a specified location, the Blade opened many tears around the globe, leaking out "dimensional windows", which acted as a two-way doorway to both locations. The two places that these tears linked to were the two that the Blade most associated with; Earth-X, its origin location, and the Da'Fay homeworld, as that was the planned location of the link. This resulted in an all-out war between the Da'Fay, Earth-A and Earth-X.
 * The time paradox created by the defeat of The Ever-Dark caused strain on the time/space matrix
 * The Da'Fay attack in 1950, with the heavy use of Anti-Matter Rays and Light-Rays, caused a large energy influx in North America
 * The above combined with the large energy output of the Hiroshima Incident, created a mass of unused energy in the Earth's atmosphere
 * When Soulbind bound the soul of The Core to the Earth's core, the mystical/spiritual energy was spread across the Earth
 * A heavy use of Energite around the world polluted the world with yet more unused energy
 * The SHOTS Initiative came into possession of the Blade of Aeons, and began experimentation to further space travel use.

Crisis Averted
It is unknown how long this huge rampage of destruction lasted, but the best guess is at around a month. The army of Earth-X, led by the notorious Glorihound, inhabited much of Canada and North America, while the Da'Fay invaded Europe and Asia. The heroes of Earth-A attempted in vain to hold back the flood of much more powerful opponents, but countless fell under the horde, of which we only know the first; Dick Dapper. By the halfway point of the Crisis, the three sides reached a stalemate, with none having the manpower to take the rest of the world. It was then that a new hope for humanity rose, in the form of a new Pantheon of Heroes. Led by All American's anonymous, Stetson-wearing son Prodigal Son, this new team counted amongst its members a recently converted Heretic, and technology-based super Trick. Leading the charge, the new Pantheon struck key locations in first the Earth-X headquarters, and then the Da'Fay, with the help of the still-living original Foe Fighter, Red Defender. With the enemy severely crippled, Trick used his spectacular grasp of all things technological to reprogram the Blade of Aeons to go into full reverse, or as he would say "reverse the polarity", and near-all of the things that had come through the reality tears were whipped back to their correct dimension, with the final piece being the Blade itself. Of the Earth-X citizens, only Glorihound and The Heretic remained, though it unknown why or how the prior resisted the effects.

In the aftermath of the First Crisis, the new Pantheon was christened as the new team to represent America, taking the place in American culture that All American had once had. A new era in the First Age began, as the first fully fledged superteam went to work, defending the American way of life.

Oh, and obviously SHOTS was shut down. Because they really screwed up.

Penned By
James E. R. Knights