The device took some time to do what they wanted, but over the next few years, all of the members of the Kentron Contingency simply vanished without a trace. This time Intelligence One were not willing to launch search and rescue missions. Last time, they’d been aided by super heroes to find missing kids. This time the super heroes themselves had been taken by something that would therefore make short work of I-1. Intelligence One decided to operate covertly until some time in the mid 1980s, when they’d observed enough developments to see if action could be taken. With her team gone, and her romance with Chuck now impossible, Jan remained with Space Ghost, and eventually met a boy from a team of space based teenage super heroes (The Teen Force) called Kid Comet. Although they would not start dating until 1981.
All around America, groups of kids, usually with pets, were taking on the world’s criminals, somehow finding the means to unmask and defeat them. The Reality Renovator saw several such groups come into existence, none of which were considered to pose any threat to Luthor and Zin:
Mysteries Inc (composed of four kids and a dog called Scooby-Doo, who spent most of their time running or eating or debunking false ghosts).
Josie and the Pussycats (several kids and a cat).
Goober and the Ghost Chasers (several kids and a dog).
Skip, Augie and April and their dog Elmo (who also made the mistake of teaming up with ghosts).
Tinker, Debbie and Mark (and a talking car named Speed Buggy).
Lori, Gater and Lori’s tiny uncle Inch High Private Eye, who worked for the Finkerton Detective Agency with the help of their dog Braveheart.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, and their pet dog Elvis.
The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan.
Sue Corwin and her friends, who were preparing to take a flight to explore an uncharted island by the year 1977, but were now in the early stages of constructing a powerful robot named Pops. The Pops project would occupy them for the next few years.
“Now all that remains is to use the Reality Renovator to phase out the newly formed Superfriends, and we’ll start with my biggest headache, namely Superman,” said Luthor.
“Oh no you won’t!” said a purple and orange costumed pygmy sized man who suddenly popped into view and snapped his fingers.
With that, the Reality Renovator shrank to tiny size and appeared on the little man’s shoulder.
“Who are you?”
“I’m from the 5th dimension, the place from whence you stole this device four years ago,” said the man, “My name is pronounced Mxyzptlk. I could have come here and taken this thing back years ago. I was happy to let you phase those boring Kentron Contingency characters out of existence, but nobody takes away my fun of confounding Superman. Why in a few years, I might start on his Super Friends for a new novelty. So you’re not replacing them with powerless teenagers and a dog. I could have used my own advanced scientific powers to take out the Kentron Contingency, but the only trouble is that the effects of whatever I do are gone when I go. So I let you two steal the Reality Renovator just long enough to do it yourselves. From what I’ve observed, Mini Lad’s and Enlarger Girl’s ring halves had absorbed enough dimension traversing energy to just possibly have the power to force me home without getting me to say my name backwards. So I let you take them out of existence with the machine.”
“So what are you going to do?” asked Zin.
“I’m going to say my name backwards, which will take me home to the 5th dimensional world of Zrrf, and take back our Reality Renovator with me. For once I’ll be a hero there. So I’ll go willingly. Superman won’t even have to trick me into saying Kltpzyxm.”
With the mention of that word, the sounds of the syllables opened the unique dimensional doorway which applied only to the owner of the name (a peculiar property of Zrrf inhabitants) and sucked Mxyzptlk back into his home dimension.
“We were so close!” said Luthor, “Now we’ll have to get the time conveyor working and avert the existence of the Superfriends like I originally planned.”
“You’ll have to do it alone,” said Zin, “My arch enemies’ super allies are all gone now, and the Super Friends don’t have anything about me on their records. Their government liason Colonel Wilcox is not privy to Intelligence One’s files on me. I’m not risking exposure and capture by the Super Friends made more likely by helping you. I’ll take my robot spiders and leave.”
So like I-1, Zin went into hiding and would not clash with Quest Team again until 1986.
Luthor needed another scientific mind to assist him in perfecting the time conveyor. He managed to contact an alien computer android who had briefly teamed up with him in 1967 and 1968: Brainiac. Together they got the time conveyor working and, by 1973, they had recruited two more members to help them deal with the Super Friends. Both were known arch enemies of the second most powerful core member of the Super Friends (Wonder Woman): Cheetah and Giganta.
“We’re going to start by doing a test run into the past and altering the origins of the teenage sidekicks of the Justice Leaguers,” said Luthor, “except for Robin, who doesn’t worry me in the least. With most of the Teen Titans gone, the Justice Leaguers will have to spend a lot of time training ordinairy powerless teenagers to be sidekicks, while we build our team. By 1978, I think we’ll be ready to take on the Justice Leaguers ourselves.”
“I got my power from a chemical dust with enlarging properties, which I stole from a young apache indian,” said Giganta, “Once sprinkled, it’s absorbed into the skin and enables a permanent power of growing to giant size and then shrinking back to normal. Wonder Woman doesn’t know that I have this new power. I once fobbed her off with some ridiculous story about being evolved from an ape, but all this time I’ve been planning. Just before my past confrontations with her, I only grew to 8 feet tall, to let her think that being 8 feet tall was my natural size. I didn’t want to tip my full hand, since she was a founding member of the Justice League. Now that I’m with your team …”