Dexter Fleck was a cameraman and inventor in 1930s Hollywood, where he worked on many of the adventure serials of the era. When Myrna Lamont -- his paramour and a leading starlet of tthe time -- was murdered, he set out to solve the crime and ended up rooting out some of the worst corruption in Tinseltown. Bribes and bodily threats failed to thwart Dexter’s determination to get answers, but one too many brushes with the underworld’s enforcers caused him to take a step back and think about how one man could possibly hope to confront so many.

The solution lay with his skills in stagecraft and special effects. In between film shoots, Dexter developed and perfected a range of special high-intensity flashbulbs, smokebombs, and reflective devices that would allow him to confuse and manipulate enemies before laying into them with good old-fashioned fisticuffs. Soon, a mysterious black-clad figure began popping up out of nowhere to disrupt criminal activities, disappearing from sight as quickly as he had come, and leaving heaps of dazed thugs and newspaper headlines in his wake. Someone had come to show the world that the bright lights and glamour of Tinseltown were reflections of a dark and dangerous underbelly; his name was Mister Mirror.

In 1936, Mister Mirror finally uncovered a hot lead on hard evidence that would identify the man who had paid to have Myrna killed. But it was a trap. So, on a warm September night, Mister Mirror found himself casing a wharfside warehouse, where the very hitman who had killed Myrna lay in wait. The hitman had Mister Mirror, completely unaware, in his sights. He pulled the trigger, a sharp report pierced the night, but the bullet hit an empty packing crate and nothing else. Mister Mirror had disappeared once again.

In that moment between the pull of the trigger and the bullet’s impact, Mister Mirror ceased to exist in 1936.

Flash forward to 2004, sixty-eight years later. S.E.R.A.P.H.’s Team Telechronos (a trio of eccentric time travel engineers), in their efforts to augment the fight against the growing tide of villainy, have hatched a harebrained scheme: to bring crimefighters from the past to the present day and enlist them in the defense of Paragon City. Historians compile a list of past heroes who died or disappeared in the line of duty, funding is narrowly approved, and the first candidate is chosen. Since the technology is untested on humans and considered very high-risk, this candidate must be expendable; an obscure vigilante-type from the 1930s, with no surviving family, is selected.

Despite lingering physical side effects, the chronoport of Mister Mirror from 1936 to the present day is considered a success, and Team Telechronos is granted funding for another round of “abductions.” Within weeks, heroes and heroines from the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and even the future are appearing on the streets of Paragon City. No one can be certain, but as these crimefighters share their moxie and know-how with the new generation of heroes, the tide does indeed seem to be turning.

But where does that leave our displaced friend, Mister Mirror? Initially overwhelmed by the strange new world in which he finds himself, the master of mirage turns to the only thing he has known since the death of his beloved: fighting crime wherever it may be found. Before long, however, the profusion of ninjas and demons supposedly fighting on the side of justice threatens to dampen MM’s fighting spirit, and he realizes that he must take action to avoid this possibility.

And so he founds the Guardians of the Golden Age, a supergroup devoted to upholding the three classic ideals of old-school crimefighting: character, team spirit, and – let’s not forget – fashion sense.* Originally conceived as a refuge for other anachronistic heroes, the Guardians have since broadened their reach to include members from all times and places, as long as they meet the criteria established by the aforementioned ideals. As Mister Mirror himself has said, “The Golden Age isn’t a time or place. It’s a state of mind.”

* An undocumented fourth ideal has been alleged as “proper punctuation and spelling.”