Valeen
Valeen was a Batman who had dealings with Steve Zodiac and the World Space Patrol in early 2065.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
When the prison ship Black Maria 9 was struck by a meteorite shower and was partly destroyed during its crash on an asteroid occupied by Batmen, Valeen and the others attempted to care for him during the day. However, they returned at night to find that he had apparently turned into one of them, though he had actually made skin and an oxygen kit in order to fool them.
By January 2065, the man had become the leader of the Batmen and had begun using them as a way to continue his gangster work. This resulted in the hijacking of a space freighter in Area 4 of Sector 25, which drew the attention of the World Space Patrol and Fireball XL5, and eventually the capture of the entire Fireball crew after they pursued the freighter to the asteroid to investigate. At this point, the leader threatened to drop Venus into a lake which contained a liquid that "crush-freeze[d]" if Steve did not disarm Robert the Robot and surrender Fireball to the Batmen. Valeen lowered one of Steve and Mat's jetmobiles into the liquid in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the substance. Steve agreed to save Venus, with Valeen agreeing to hold the prisoners while his leader took Fireball for a test-flight. Upon his return, the leader boasted to Valeen that "every space ship" would be at their mercy. However, the leader passed close by to Robert during his celebrations, who was ordered by Steve to grab him, with the robot's grip exposing the leader as a human in a spacesuit. Valeen observed that he had not changed and was still an Earthman, with another Batman noting they had been tricked. Steve then asked the Batmen if they wanted to risk an attack from the World Space Patrol for the sake of an impostor, which was met by calls from some of the Batmen to kill their former leader. However, Valeen, who quickly emerged as a new leader, forbade this by pointing out that they used to be peaceful and instead asked that Steve take him back to Earth and leave them in peace. Valeen also showed Steve to where they had been keeping the crew of the freighter in a "frozen sleep" and explained to him just how the leader had convinced his people he was truly one of them. Both the freighter and Fireball then took off from the asteroid, with Steve jovially requesting that Valeen call Space City the next time he found someone in space, something Valeen said he would remember. (COMIC: The Batmen)
