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History

Clairton is a village[1] located near the Allegheny Mountains in northeastern West Virginia.[2] It was once a thriving coal mining town until the coal reserves were all mined out.[3] Clairton is twenty miles from Lansing, West Virginia,[1] and within sight of Lucifer Falls, an even smaller mining town.[4]

At some point after the end of World War II, members of the evil alien race known as the Dire Wraiths, began to infiltrate Clairton, using their shape-shifting powers to disguise themselves as humans.[5] Sheriff Roy Barnes[2] and Police Chief Martin Rogers[1] were both secretly Dire Wraiths.

In recent years, when the Galadorian Spaceknight Rom first arrived on Earth, he landed near Clairton. When he began using his Neutralizer to banish the Dire Wraiths he had detected to Limbo, the human residents were unable to see what was really happening and believed him to be an alien robot who was incinerating their fellow townspeople. The only Clairtoner who believed Rom was Brandy Clark, the first person Rom met after arriving, who had seen evidence that supported his claim about alien shape-shifters.[2]

Eventually, a number of other Clairtoners also learned the truth[6] and they began helping Rom with his mission.[7] At this time, more than a dozen Clairton families vanished and were later determined to have all secretly been Dire Wraiths who had infiltrated the community.[5]

At one point, after Rom had been manipulated into leaving Earth to return to his homeworld of Galador, the Wraiths used a sorcerous fog that gradually affected all the people of Clairton, robbing them of their wills and making them mindlessly obedient.[8] Once the last two humans, Brandy Clark and Steve Jackson, were captured and robbed of their wills, the Wraiths ordered the entire population to descend into the mines where they were to remain as imprisoned hostages against Rom's return while the Wraiths replicated their forms so that they could take Rom by surprise when he returned.[9] While the disguised Wraiths lived in Clairton, the real Clairtoners remained trapped in a specially-prepared white cell in the mines.[10] However, the Mole Man had detected the subterranean prison and the mole he had sent to investigate had burrowed up through the floor of the cell, dispelling the mental illusion that the cell had no walls, thereby enabling the Torpedo to blast their way to freedom. When the Clairtoners explained the situation to the Mole Man and about the menace that the Dire Wraiths posed to everyone on Earth, he helped them devise a plan to combat the Wraiths. Soon after Rom, accompanied by his fellow Spaceknight Starshine, returned to Clairton and were completely deceived by the Wraith imposters, the Clairtoners put their plan into operation. They began causing small areas of the ground to open up directly under the imposters who were then dragged below the surface to where the humans could overpower them before they could shift shapes and escape. When the Spaceknights learned of these abductions, Rom's supposed friends deceived them into believing that the Wraiths were responsible and sent them to the old mines. While the Spaceknights investigated, the abductions continued until only two Wraiths, those who were impersonating Brandy Clark and Steve Jackson, remained. In the mines, the Spaceknights encountered the Outcasts and ended up battling them until the real Clairtoners intervened and explained how they had defeated the Wraiths who had taken over their town. However, when those last two Wraiths then arrived and tried to kill Rom, Starshine sacrificed herself to protect Rom, enabling him to then banish the Wraiths.[11]

After Rom left town to cleanse the rest of Earth of Dire Wraiths, Clairton became peaceful again, except for when the Dire Wraith Warlock Doctor Dredd was able to mesmerize Brandy Clark and mystically merge her with Starshine's empty Spaceknight armor.[12]

While Rom and this new Starshine remained away from Clairton, Dire Wraiths Witches began to slowly invade the town, using their ability to feed on the brains of their victims to absorb their memories while duplicating their forms.[13] After the Witchwraiths wiped out the male Sciwraiths who had been in control of their infiltration of Earth,[14] they turned their attention to Clairton, seeking revenge for the help that the humans living there had given to Rom, and they began by killing and duplicating some of Rom's closest allies, including Steve Jackson and Brandy's parents. When Rom and Starshine returned to Clairton, Rom thought that her parents were behaving strangely and wanted to use his Energy Analyzer on them but Brandy objected and Rom complied with his wishes. At a gathering of their friends held that night, the Wraith Witches sprang their trap and managed to banish them both to a hostile Shadow-Dimension. However, as the Wraiths continued their massacre of Clairton, a party of Skrulls arrived, seeking their ancient enemy.[15]

The following morning, as the Skrulls approached the town, the Wraith Witches killed and replace Clairton's human protector, the Torpedo (Brock Jones). That night, the Skrulls entered Clairton to hunt down and kill the disguised Dire Wraiths infesting the hamlet. They began with the false Brock Jones, killing the Wraith but sparing the humans, and then cleansing the Wraith-tainted house by setting it on fire. By the time Starshine was able to free herself and Rom from the Shadow-Dimension, fires were raging across Clairton. The two Spaceknights followed the fires and confronted the Skrulls just as they had reached the Clark home. When the disguised Wraiths emerged and attacked with spells, the Skrulls responded with their blasters and Rom encouraged Brandy to use her light-eyes to see the truth about her family and friends. Once she knew that truth, she used her light-eyes to begin killing the Wraiths while Rom banished them, and Brandy burned down her former home. Later, after the Wraiths had been dealt with, the human survivors and the Spaceknights met with the Skrulls who revealed why they hated the Dire Wraiths, who were a deviant branch of their race.[16]

Less than a week later, after Starshine had hunted down and killed some Wraiths she had detected trying to flee Clairton, she and Rom attended the funeral of Clairton. When a TV news team arrived to cover the bizarre funeral with empty coffins, Rom and Starshine took that opportunity to tell the world what had happened there and about the threat that the Dire Wraiths posed to all humanity. As Rom called upon the human race to rise up and fight the Dire Wraiths alongside him, the Wraiths also heard his words and promised to either conquer Earth or render it incapable of supporting any life at all.[17]

Points of Interest

  • Clairton Cemetery
  • Clairton Clarion
  • Clairton County Jail
  • Clairton General Hospital
  • Clairton Grammar School
  • Clairton High School
  • Clairton Pharmaceutical Labs
  • Clairton Scrap Iron & Junk
  • County Coroner's Office
  • Dairy King
  • Jackson's Auto Repairs
  • A church

Residents

Notes

  • While a caption in Rom #1 did state that Clairton was a small city with a population of 14,000 people, subsequent issues consistently described it as being much smaller. Clairton was referenced as being a small suburban community and a village,[1] a backwater burg,[18] an unexceptional little town,[19] a one-horse town,[7] a tiny hamlet,[10] and a tiny town.[17] The fact that the Dire Wraiths were once able to capture and replicate all of the human residents of Clairton indicates that the total population must have been much lower than 14,000 people and always had been.
  • Although it was never mentioned in-story, it seems certain that, after abducting and overpowering the Dire Wraiths who had replaced them, the humans of Clairton must have killed those Wraiths. After all, they really had no other way to deal with them.

Trivia

  • The people who lived in Clairton called themselves Clairtoners.

See Also

Links and References

References

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