by Libbylawrence
April, 1987:
In a small house in Northern California, a pretty teenage girl tossed and turned restlessly in her bedroom. She was a blonde with blue eyes and an athletic build. She spent most of her time either in school, practicing various survival or military techniques with the other California Resistance members who met under the leadership of her older brother, or helping her frail mother out around their home. Courtney Dale Noble was not the kind of girl who normally had trouble falling to sleep or was bothered by nightmares. She followed busy days with the sleep of the just.
However, lately things had changed for the seventeen-year-old girl. She had started to experience vivid dreams that recurred nightly and remained fresh in her memory upon awakening. She didn’t tell her brother about the dreams. Jerry Noble, known as the Yankee Eagle, was serious and caring, but he was also badly needed by the Resistance. He had also been a bit distracted over the past year and more with thoughts of his own that had revolved around the dynamic and sultry Sandra “Phantom Lady” Knight. He had formed an attachment to the famed Freedom Fighter at the end of 1985, and while their duties had separated them just as perhaps an awareness that her heart belonged to another, he still thought of the beautiful woman in the brief gold and green costume often.
Courtney hadn’t told her mother Joanne Noble about the dreams for another reason. While Joanne had once been a Freedom Fighter and heroine in her own right, her days as the dazzling Miss America were long behind her. The elderly woman had lost her remarkable magic ability to transform things like a living Philosopher’s Stone during the early years of the war, and had instead happily settled down to start a family with another former hero, Larry Noble the original Yankee Eagle, and had even gone so far as to change her first name in order to further disguise her identity by the time the Nazis took over America as well. The retirement had been necessary because she had also begun to suffer from weak spells. Courtney knew that her mother had tried to keep these spells from her, but then Joanne Noble had bravely soldiered on alone in most areas of life since her beloved husband’s death. Courtney had refused to burden her ailing mother with her own troubles.
Now, as Courtney tossed and turned beneath the covers, she had the same dream once more. It started as it always did. She saw herself, and yet she was not herself, but a girl named Usa.
What a strange name, thought Courtney, pulled out of the dream momentarily as thoughts crossed her mind. Is it Scandinavian?
She was dressed in old-fashioned clothing. Courtney had never really been interested in fashion, and didn’t know what the correct terms were to describe how she saw herself in the dream. As Usa, she wore a rather plain and somewhat faded blue gown, but had already removed a bonnet that usually covered her hair and placed it to the side, where she’d now forgotten it. The gown was long and coarse, and she felt as if it threatened to smother her. Somehow she also sensed that this dress was one of the only ones she owned. It was faded and patched, and had seen better days. She was tired and hungry as well. She looked down and noticed the blue shoes she wore were threadbare, while her feet were hardened from being used to walking barefoot. She was on her knees looking up at a woman who was sitting in an old chair. The woman looked familiar. She had seen her before, but not only within the confines of the recurring dream. She had seen a drawing or engraving of this maternal woman as she sewed a colorful fabric that stretched across her lap.
Is that Betsy Ross? She’s making the first American flag! realized Courtney as fragments of knowledge from the dream and her normal school studies blended together, and also somehow knew that the year was 1777. Something also told her that the seamstress wasn’t necessarily Betsy Ross herself. Wasn’t it a myth that the Philadelphia woman had made the first flag? Wasn’t she only one of several women who had contributed to the creation of the famous flag? Courtney didn’t know, and truthfully didn’t care. The lady who looked at Courtney in such a maternal manner leaned over and handed her a golden locket.
“Some threads of this flag are in this locket,” said the mysterious seamstress. “Take it and keep it, child.”
Courtney didn’t question her benefactor as she placed the locket around her neck, instead only feeling a rush of excitement that drove her to run out of the small house into the rain to show the contents of her locket to her Uncle Sam, and to spread the news of the concrete birth of a symbol for the new nation. The street was cold and rainy, and she shivered through the thin dress that was immediately soaked.
She saw herself again at some later point, when she was pale and ill. In fact, she was dying. Usa clutched the locket to her breast, and the dream grew dark. And then she heard a strong but kindly voice.
“Sleep, my child, for in many years you shall awake as Usa, the Spirit of Old Glory, to watch and defend it!”
She felt as if that voice, which had assured her that she would live again, belonged to an old man with supernatural vitality. Flashes of red, white, and blue overwhelmed her.
The scene changed, and she saw herself again. Usa was still wearing the golden locket, but she was no longer dressed in the ragged old gown. She was neither pale nor weak, and neither cold nor hungry. She was healthy, beautiful, and an almost supernaturally powerful grown woman, brought back to life after a long sleep. Her short, bouncing blonde hair flowed freely. She wore a sleeveless brief blue tunic and blue sandals. She held a glowing torch in one hand and a star-spangled flag in the other, which rested across her shoulders like a cape, moving of its own accord since there was no wind. She now saw herself flying over modern cityscapes, and she laughed with girlish glee as she confronted and easily bested Nazi agents in the early 1940s, hearing them say her name with awe and fear: “Usa! Usa! Usa!” (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See Introducing Usa the Spirit of Old Glory, Feature Comics #42 (March, 1941).]
The scene changed once more, and the heroine who both was and was not Courtney now looked regal and powerful, but also venerable and maternal. The brief tunic had been replaced by a long pale gown that made Courtney think of the outfit worn by the Statue of Liberty, with the star-spangled flag draped over her gown. She also wore sandals on her feet, and a wreath of golden laurels now lay atop her head like a crown. The old woman looked radiant as she smiled kindly and stared directly ahead as if was speaking to Courtney herself.
“The Spirit of America does not age, but her host does! While I am Old Glory now, the time has come for there to once more be a young and vibrant USA!”
Courtney heard the name USA as a refrain that gradually seemed to change to the word, “You! You! You!”
She sat up with a shudder and pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. As she straightened the pink nightgown she wore, she felt a chain around her neck and glanced down to see that the same golden locket from her dream was now resting upon her rising and falling chest.
Am I going crazy? she thought as she clutched a blanket.
***
In a room down the hall, Courtney’s mother Joanne Noble was also awake. She struggled to catch her breath, and felt the old exhaustion sweep over her.
Joanne stifled a groan and listened to see if it had disturbed her daughter. I don’t want to wake Courtney, she thought. I know she is worried about me. The poor girl shouldn’t have to be so grown up! She’s already more mature than I was when I first became Miss America in my early twenties. Of course, she’s grown up in a world at war, while I grew up during the Great Depression. That was no piece of cake, either! I remember how happy I was when I landed a job at the Daily Star. I didn’t realize that I was going to be considered little more than a copyboy in high heels and seamed hosiery!
She remembered visiting Bedloe’s Island on that fateful day in May of 1941 when she fell asleep on a park bench as she sat gazing up at the Statue of Liberty. While dozing she had a vivid dream in which the Statue of Liberty seemed to come to life and answer her idle daydream to have all the magic powers the statue might possess.
When Joan Dale woke up from the powerfully evocative dream, she discovered that she now had magic powers that made her into a living Philosopher’s Stone able to transmute anyone or anything into another form or substance. She immediately decided to use these new powers as a heroine named Miss America. (*) In time, she even left the Daily Star to work as Girl Friday to FBI Agent Tim Healy. At that time she also designed and created a daring patriotic costume consisting of a red bodice without sleeves, a striped red and white skirt, and blue high heels. (*) She had a thrilling but rather short-lived career as Miss America, battling several criminals and a few American Bundists before being recruited to join Uncle Sam himself in a crusade to save a twin Earth from Nazi domination, an Earth that proved to be much more familiar to them than any of them realized.
[(*) Editor’s note: See Miss America stories in Military Comics #1 (August, 1941) and Military Comics #4 (November, 1941).]
I was so girlish back then, she mused. I just accepted those incredible magic powers as if I was merely trying on a new pair of high heels or switching perfumes!
She frowned as she recalled how that last mission had started back in December of 1941. Uncle Sam himself had recruited her to join him and several other young heroes in a desperate effort to stop an Axis attack in the Pacific. She had been joined by the Invisible Hood, Magno the Great, Neon the Unknown, Hourman, and the Red Torpedo. They had destroyed the initial wave of attacking Japanese planes on that December morning in the Pacific Ocean, but an unseen plane had dived out of the sun in a sudden and deadly attack that had killed all of them except for Hourman, Uncle Sam, and Joan Dale herself. (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See “Crisis on Earth-X: The Prequel,” All-Star Squadron #32 (April, 1984).]
Each one of those men were true heroes who had selflessly risked their lives to stop an attack that no one would even know about for a long time to come! She sighed. How I miss those good, brave men.
Leaning over to her night stand, she looked at a newspaper, and decided to read for a while until she could fall asleep once more.
The headline read: Axis Forces Victorious in South American Skirmish.
Joanne Noble blinked for a moment, and looked down at the paper again.
The headline now read: The Führer Promises No End to Golden Age of Peace and Prosperity.
Joanne seemed oblivious to the fact that the headline had changed in the blink of an eye, and instead smiled to herself and said, “Thank goodness we have a good man like John Grant to rule our world!”
Recalling her deceased friends once more, she sighed again. How I wish they could have lived to see what a bright future we have now, thanks to our benevolent leader! she thought.