Gretchen had plenty of money from her 401K and her husband’s insurance policies, and from the time to time her children would send her money and take care of her bills as well. In other words, Gretchen had lived a great life, and now her late life was going pretty well, too. But she DID eventually get bored. She was still healthy and spry and energetic, so sewing circles, church groups and little old lady clubs were just not for her. So she applied for, and got, a job at a fast food burger joint, and from the very start her coworkers loved her! Her spunky attitude and sarcasm made her a favorite amongst the patrons as well. Things were going great.

However, after about a year of flipping burgers and putting salt on fries, she received the news that no parent ever wants to receive. Her oldest son, Adam, had passed away. She was told it was a car accident. After the funeral, however, she and her other sons and daughters were digging through Adam’s basement, when she found a mysterious box, the contents of which made her think differently.

When she opened the box, she found a collection of strange, multicolored diamonds. She picked one up, and immediately she could hear the thoughts of everyone else in the house. Startled, she put the diamond down. But she did pick up a second stone, and suddenly her hands began pulsing with energy. Fearing her fingers were on fire, she started shaking them, which caused a succession of energy blasts from her palms. Her sons and daughters came running down the stairs, wondering what all the commotion was. She put the diamond down and closed the box before anyone could see what she was looking at, then promised them all that the noise came from an old piece of furniture that had fallen over. She assured them she was okay.

Gretchen took the box home, and that night she realized each of the more than two dozen diamonds imbued her with a different hyper-ability: enhanced strength, super speed, flight, telepathy, telekinesis, a plethora of energy-based abilities, and more. And as she began to test her new abilities, she also began to realize that her son definitely did not die in a car accident, but more likely by doing something either very heroic or very dastardly.

Either way, it was something “super”, and whatever it was, Gretchen made up her mind that she wanted a part of that world. Her 70+ years of living an ordinary life were over. She was now ready to become something extraordinary. It didn’t take long for her to master the use of the diamonds; after getting some custom made gear and a pretty sick makeover, she rechristened herself “Utopia” and began adventuring throughout the universe.

It was an incredible time for her! She traveled to other galaxies, watched sunsets on faraway planets, rode shooting stars and met a number of alien species. But as much fun as she had doing all of that, nothing was more thrilling than the battles she had against intergalactic baddies. Like the time she was hanging out on the planet Xunia, when the super-villainess Clytemnestra Crux decided she wanted to steal a number of suns from a collection of solar systems on the nearside of the Andromeda galaxy.

As you can imagine, a number of planets, including Xunia, were quickly succumbing to a series of cataclysmic events in the wake of losing the heat and gravity of their central stars. Utopia detected this and flew out to confront the space-pirate, who had secured a massive craft and a “particle net” she was using to tow the suns away. Utopia attacked, but even with all of her abilities Clytemnestra’s starship was much too powerful. Luckily, two other galactic heroes were on the scene – Magnifica and King Ka’Desh. And the three of them teamed up to defeat Ms. Crux and return the stars to their rightful places in the galaxy.

The three of them would continue teaming up, and eventually represented the core of an intergalactic hero squad called the Diamond Alliance, led by the mighty Magnifica. Along with three other members (Twinstar, Mr. Amazing and Thundersnow), they would go on to save many a day.

Utopia formed an especially close bond with Magnifica, as both of them had family members who had died (or possibly just disappeared) in mysterious ways: the former’s son and the latter’s mother. They went on a number of journeys throughout the galaxy together following leads, but mostly found nothing. Utopia, however, never gave up hope, and continued to search for answers.

The Diamond Alliance was eventually disbanded, and during their final battle together Utopia’s hyper-stones were dispersed all across the galaxy. A number of them actually landed on Earth, and a few of them have come into the possession of humans. Most notably, the strength-diamond impaled itself into the chest of a teenager by the name Julius Thorne (aka Brolic) who eventually grew up to become one of the super cops of Platinum City.

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