Professor Haley
77 years ago - Walter Mark Haley is born in New Jersey.
62 years ago - 15-year-old Walter Haley attends St Petersburg Junior College.
60 years ago - 17-year-old Walter Haley earns a bachelor's degree in biology. He begins to focus his study in Marine Biology and Phycology, his research bringing him all over the world, learning a variety of diving techniques.
57 years ago - 20-year-old Walter Haley earns his masters degree in Marine Biology.
56 years ago - 21-year-old Walter Haley is recognized as one of the youngest expert ocean divers in the world. He is nicknamed 'professor'.
54 years ago - 23-year-old Professor Walter Haley earns their doctorate in Phycology, continuing to travel the world for his research.
50 years ago - 27-year-old Professor Walter Haley, June Robbins, Ace Morgan, Red Ryan and Rocky Davis and survive a plane crash on a volcanic island when their B-47 Stratojet transpacific flight encounters an unexplained spatial phenomenon. They bond over the belief that they had escaped death and felt driven to make something of their borrowed time. Upon returning to civilization, they begin an Adventure Club, The Challengers of the Unknown.
32 years ago - 45-year old Professor Walter Haley and The Challengers of the Unknown are trapped in a rigged-to-explode Challengers Mountain along with a group of hostages when it is sabotaged by Hunzar Manning. Professor Walter Haley sacrifices himself, gunned down by Manning's men, to reconnect Ultivac to its body. Ultivac sacrifices itself to save everyone, proving itself an honorary Challenger.
The individual members of the Challengers do have their own personalities and specialties, but what they don't really have is their own STORY. They all exist, more or less, just as a function of the whole. So it follows that we're going to need to take the fairly bare-bones idea of each of these characters and see what we can build from them.
Professor Haley's StoryOf the four original Challengers of the Unknown, "Prof" Haley was perhaps the most interesting departure from a classic adventurer serial archetype. A lot of those classic sci-fi serial heroes had a professor character among their allies, but Haley was considered an equal participant of the adventure. He even got his own adventuring specialty, although "master skin diver" might be the most situationally useful of those original skills. The Challengers all had their own unique build and look even as far back as their earlier appearances, and Haley had a uniquely fit-but skinny physique and more pronounced cheekbones, making him look narrow and angular. he is almost a one-to-one doppelganger of Mister Fantastic, and in a lot of ways is setting a sort of precedent for how to go about doing that particular scientist-as-superhero archetype. Nevertheless he was an equal participant in the more physical adventures; in my reading he's actually the Challenger that seemed to undergo the most physical trauma, whether that means succumbing to a Swamp Thing style virus, being gunned down and supposedly killed by bad guys, or dying in the explosion of Challengers Mountain in Jeph Loeb's 1991 Challengers story.
We based our Professor's backstory on famous marine biologist Dr. Sylvie Earle, trying to put a lot of focus on his prolific dive history all over the world, establishing him as a very young, adventurous scientist long before he became a Challenger. We took a sort of cue from the Loeb story, making Haley's death during the destruction of their mountain headquarters a big catalyst for the team disbanding. We just wanted to make sure that in doing so, he has a moment where he gets to CHOOSE how he goes, getting the opportunity to make the most of his borrowed time, fulfilling the charter of the Challengers. |
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