Meet Lonestar & LonghornFBI Special Agent Josiah Cortland was home on medical leave when he became friends with his neighbors, the McAllisters. He and Sam McAllister shared a love of baseball and the McAllister’s young daughter Elizabeth (Liz) grew up playing in his backyard.Time passed and Liz McAllister’s teenaged years were filled with rebellious acts and numerous run-ins with the law. Josiah’s many attempts to help the McAllister family get their daughter’s life back on track failed to make any change in Liz’s behavior or attitude and eventually she was arrested and remanded to the Arden Home for Troubled Youth; a chain of juvenile correctional facilities funded by millionaire, philanthropist (and former crime lord) Valmond Arden. These correctional facilities were a front for secret laboratories where experiments were conducted on some members of the facilities’ population. Soon after entering the facility Liz lost her parents to an automobile accident and she became an unwilling participant in the facility’s experiments.Agent Cortland visited Liz at the facility and became suspicious after she used a phrase she would always use when she was in deep trouble. This prompted Cortland to investigate some of the goings on at the facility. He discovered a trail of juvenile detainees whose parents or guardians had all mysteriously died or disappeared. He informed his superiors and was allowed to open an official investigation, unaware of the fact that his superiors were receiving bribes from Arden.One night while on a stake-out of the facility Cortland was abducted and taken down to the labs. He was forced to watch as Liz was tortured and exposed to radiation from a strange meteor. The meteor’s radiation wreaked havoc on Liz’s body and she fell into a coma-like state so deep and indistinguishable from death that she was pronounced dead. Her seemingly dead body was placed into a cold storage locker within the facility to be studied at a later date and then destroyed. In fact her body was changing.Enraged, Agent Cortland freed himself from his captors and raged through the facility, freeing captives, damaging equipment and setting rooms on fire. Eventually he was subdued and brought to the man in charge of the facility; a man known only as Couteau. Upon comparing Agent Cortland to “a bull charging through my china shop”, Couteau ordered that Cortland be made into a creature more befitting his actions. Over the next several weeks Agent Cortland underwent excruciating surgeries and genetic modifications that made him more animal than man; he looked for all intents and purposes like the savage Minotaur of myth. Couteau made sure that Cortland was fully appraised and aware of his condition at every stage of his modification and informed the FBI agent that his final torture would be to undergo brain surgery that would reduce his intelligence to that of a beast.It was at this point that Liz’s body finished its transformation and she burst out of cold storage possessing the power of a living cosmic energy battery. She found Agent Cortland and together they liberated the rest of the prisoners and destroyed the laboratory; apprehending Couteau and most of his staff in the process. Agent Cortland also led the investigation that brought his crooked FBI superiors to justice.Their story became somewhat of a media sensation and Agent Cortland and Liz were invited to join T.A.S.K. Agent Cortland initially resisted and due to the torture he suffered, entered a deep state of depression. It took the efforts of Liz and T.A.S.K. member White Buffalo (who also has the appearance of an anthropomorphized bovine) to urge Cortland back into the world again. Agent Cortland took on the codename Longhorn and he and Liz; now known as Lonestar, operate as members of T.A.S.K. in the great state of Texas. Longhorn also serves as T.A.S.K.’s FBI liaison.
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