When Lee Walter Travis decided to adopt the alter ego of Crimson Avenger, he stepped outside his comfort zone as a wealthy newspaper publisher and into the world of costumed crimefighting. As a member of Law's Legionnaires... also known as the Seven Soldiers of Victory, he and his sidekick Wing had several adventures alongside his teammates. The last was a monumental clash with the alien Nebula Man, which caused Lee and the other Soldiers except Wing to be sent to various past centuries. Now in ancient Mexico, Travis became amnesiac and believed himself to be the ruler of its native people. This effect, along with new superhuman powers, were caused by exposure to a fragment of the Nebula Man. When the Justice Society and Justice League retrieved the Legionnaires, returning them to the 20th century to battle their old foe the Iron Hand, Lee discovered that his dear friend Wing sacrificed his life to destroy Nebula Man.
After a brief retirement, in 1980 Lee resumed his heroic career as Crimson Avenger defending Metropolis, while in his professional career he had moved his newspaper the Daily Globe-Leader to that city and renamed it the Daily Planet. However, the next year, Travis learned that he was succumbing to an incurable condition brought on by the Nebula radiation. Deciding to have one final adventure, Crimson Avenger swung from the balcony of his hospital room, saving a lad named Umberto who fell from his mom's apartment window. Then, the Avenger arrived at his original destination, a tanker in distress due to crooks seizing it for its experiemental chemicals onboard. After subduing them and freeing the vessel's crew, he ordered them to abandon ship and flee on its lifeboat while he piloted the volatile vessel out of theharbor. By doing so, the Avenger saved countless citizens on the shores surrounding Metropolis Bay, and seemingly died.
However, due to the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Travis at the instant prior to his perishing was jettisoned from this time period to that of four years in the future. There, equipped with scuba gear he had donned to escape the ship once it cleared the harbor, he ended up arriving on a world now encased in an energy dome along with countless cities from across the Multiverse.
Now residing with the city and its inhabitants on a new world named Telos, Avenger and his teammates protected Metropolis from various threats for an entire year before the dome collapsed. The ruler of this world sought to pit inhabitants of various cities against one another, and this involved the Crimson and some of his fellow Legionnaires battling the invader hordes of the Antimatter Universe of Qward known as the Thunderers.
Ultimately, the Qwardians prevailed against the remained Legionnaires, with both Crimson Avenger and his teammate Vigilante dying after being overwhelmed by superior numbers of Thunderers. Prior to this, Stripesy succumbed to pneumonia, while his partner Star-Spangled Kid was heavily involved with Infinity Inc. who were fighting off a different attack on Metropolis led by Jonah Hex and his warriors of the future.
Perhaps the most tragic losses, however, were those of the Battling Bowmen, as Green Arrow and Speedy died back on Earth-Two in the waning hours of the Crisis, as they tried to save cartoonist/reporter Scribby Jibbet from a time-displaced pterodactyl, Instead, the pair fell to their death during this valiant effort, leaving it to the sole remaining active Legionnaire the Shining Knight to come to the rescue.
Meanwhile, on Earth-S and Earth-Four, the Earth-One Green Arrow and Speedy were battling an army of villians invading these parallel planets. Both of them, unlike their counterparts, survived.
Towards the end of the Convengence event, Shining Knight invited Scribby to join him as a new Legionnaire in place of his fallen comrades. As the journalist was chronicling his adventures on this alien world under the dome, he witnessed as Metropolis and all that resided within its border was returning once more to Earth-Two. During this transition, he noted that memories of the past year on Telos were fading away, as reality was once more being restored.
Now back on Earth-Two, the fallen Legionnaires Vigilante's body was found on the streets of Metropolis, surrounded by the city's new conquerors from the Antimatter Universe. And in a cemetary, a grave marked for Pat "Stripesy" Dugan left a mystery as to what happened to fell this strong Soldier. Sadly, the final selfless sacrifice of Crimson Avenger would be left untold, as memories faded from the collective conscience of man.
Those heroes remaining, such as Shining Knight and Scribby as well as Superman, Power Girl and others would undoubtedly have vanquished the Thunderers, sending them back to Qward. This then left those in Metropolis to rebuild their city once more, which had been devastated by natural disasters of the Crisis and warfare on planet Telos.
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Interestingly, the counterparts of the Crimson Avenger and Wing, Flamebird and Nightwing, had a similar eventuality. For years, they resided with their fellow Kryptonians within the shrunken bottled city of Kandor, kept safely inside the Earth-One Superman's Fortress of of Solitude. After a series of adventures wherein Superman and Jimmy Olsen adopted the aliases of Nightwing and Flamebird, a Kandorian version of Gotham City's Dynamic Duo of Batman and Robin, scientist Van-Zee and his assistant Ak-Var borrowed these costumes for their own crimefighting escapades.
Eventually, Superman and Supergirl were able to restore Kandor and its citizens to their normal height, on a planet orbiting a red sun known as Rokyn. On this world, the former Kryptonians no longer had superhuman powers, and revealed that this world shifted between universes from time-to-time. As such, Nightwing and Flamebird along with their city were kept in a transitory state, much as the Earth-Two city of Metropolis, between universes... only Rokyn's shifting state wasn't temporary as were those of the cities on Telos.
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