A Lullaby of the Stars: A Waververse story; part 1.
Made in the sixties as the space race was intensifying interest in the universe beyond the earth, the Lullaby of the Stars premiered as a serial of three animated films through 1964 to 1965; and had been worked on since 1961. By this point, the superhero subset of the Urban fantasy genre had been joined by the explosion of characters created by Stan Lee in cooperation with Jack Kirby and with the growing intensity of the cold war came new foreign enemies to point fingers at in comics. However, Samantha turned her attentions away from the "Lion across the Atlantic" and towards something else she believed could be an issue. Being a bit more pessimistic about the need for a spacefaring society to have adopted peaceful ways, she considered the possibility of an alien menace and so drafted up the villain
Mendrogan. The story itself begins with an introduction to Mendrogan's conquest of another world, the ancient warlord gazing upon their work with tired compound eyes as they bear witness to the assimilation of yet another set of cultures into the homogenous mass of Mendrogan's ever expanding empire. As the Imperator, Mendrogan has overseen the downfall of countless other societies to fit their vision of what all civilizations should be like, and starts to turn its attention elsewhere, to where their agents tell them of a world also in need of Mendrogan's "civilizing".
Mendrogan is quickly given a rundown of the Earth and its politics and history through the lens of the Undonian Imperial Realm's agents. Mendrogan identifies the spirits and avatars of the Earth to be a concern to their plans, largely dismissing the normal humans as a nonfactor to their planned conquest, seeing them as weak and primitive. Mendrogan speaks with their aides of its plan to conquer this world and the audience is given a quick hint of the kind of army that the conqueror wields, auxilaries drawn from countless other conquered civilizations and a core of other members of its own species trained and equipped to the highest of standards; including its own core of "exosapient" beings that they believe will give their armies the edge over the spirits of the earth. But as Mendrogan draws up plans and inspects the troops, they are interrupted when one of the newly subjugated people tries to assassinate it, posing as a collaborator until they can get close enough to try to kill the conqueror. Mendrogan easily overpowers the would be assassin who asks them why they seek this path, to which Mendrogan explains that it is a bringer of peace, unity, and harmony; that it improves the standard of living where their armies tread, ends strife and conflict, and gives unity and purpose to the lost as they indulge the assassin in a short debate before Mendrogan has the Assassin put to death.
On Earth, Colombia is currently on a group date with Molotok, Valiente and Huā with some token supervision from Maui and Orobi. While they have spent more than enough time "alive" to be chronologically adults, as their home countries see themselves as young and revolutionary systems full of youth and energy, they still have not actually moved out of adolescence either mentally or physically. The four are currently hanging out in Seoul, sharing a chat with each other about ordinary every day things like one would expect out of teenagers. Everyone's personalities are immediately on display; Molotok's reserved but affectionate nature, Valiente's valorous "proleterian knight" habits, Hua's inquisitive nature, and Columbia's own relentless optimism and love of the world. Maui himself seems set on trying to impress Orobi, which Orobi mostly playfully indulges while everyone's relaxing for the time being, having gotten away from a recent battle with Aramelle and her attempts to try and tip the balance of things in the Congo towards the favor of European interests. However, as everyone prepares to head for bed, Columbia turns on the television and gets a report of strange signals being detected from a bit beyond the orbit of Jupiter.
In Mendrogan's armada of conquest, there is a short set of scenes focusing on the efforts of a resistance movement trying to sabotage Mendrogan's plans to absorb yet another set of peoples into their ever growing empire. This also introduces the characters of Visori and Meera to the audience as the two try to keep their resistance movement within Mendrogan's armies alive despite mendrogan's constant policing of the area and their ever present "thought police" who utilize psychic abilities to try and determine who might be thinking thoughts that are "harmful to the health of the empire and civilization." The struggle against Mendrogan has taken place over the course of countless decades and both Visori and Meera have been fighting against Mendrogan ever since their homeworlds were conquered by the "Great and Grand Conqueror". They manage to come together and place a device that will utilize the telepathic controls placed by mendrogan against the conqueror, waiting until they can sense that Mendrogan believes they are ready to begin the invasion and sending out a warning message to Earth as they start the mobilization order, which will be hidden among the general mass of commands and transmissions being sent out by the fleet and thus not risk blowing their cover.
On Earth, people all around the world are starting to speculate about the signals rabidly. All sorts of theories are being advanced, but as they show no similarities with any known human signals; not even those of Raena Caudilla's Iberian Imperium from her twisted alternate reality; the initial blaming of cold war enemies quickly falls to the wayside. Instead people debate on the nature of those who are sending the signals, with the world generally agreeing to approach this with "optimistic hope, but pessimistic preparation" as they lay out plans to deal with either peaceful contact or attempted aggression. Given that Maui is an old demigod, Columbia asks him if he's ever seen anything like this, but is told that as far as he knew; the gods and the supernatural world as a rule were as much in the dark about what lay beyond the Earth as anyone else was, with perhaps a bit of a knowledge edge through clairvoyant abilities; but their knowledge of the wider universe was rather spotty. He was holding out hope that everything would turn out for the best however.
Mendrogan decides to come first, descending towards the earth in a personal shuttlecraft ahead of the rest of their fleet as they land in Rome, identifying it as culturally important to much of humanity and emerges forth from their craft escorted by their imperial guard. Columbia and many others are present as they see Mendrogan's bizarre form emerge from their craft, and are even more surprised when Mendrogan actually manages to speak intelligably, introducing themselves as a bringer of harmony and unity to the people of Earth. However, the diplomats of all nations respond to Mendrogan with understandable skepticism. The ULSR delegate in particular cites how many times colonists came bearing gifts and promising civilization only to really be offering death and destruction for the natives, to Mendrogan's visible irritation as their mandibles grind against one another at the Latina woman's distrust of them. The discussions are tense as people grow increasingly suspicious of Mendrogan's offers and promises, and Mendrogan secretly starts to send telepathic signals to the fleet to prepare for invasion, but at this point; Visori and Meera's device hijacks a portion of Mendrogan's fleet communication assets and a psychic message is sent forth alerting the entire earth of Mendrogan's actual intentions and their history, bombarding humanity and its spirits with psychic images of Mendrogan's "civilizing missions".
Columbia, being head-strong as ever, is the first to attack Mendrogan; her armour appearing over her in a flash of thunder as she accuses them of being a deceitful traitor and a brawl immediately breaks out in Rome as human military forces and earth native spirits turn immediately hostile to Mendrogan and their personal guard; reinforcements for the Conqueror teleporting in as Mendrogan displays formidable personal combat abilities, managing to hold off against its attackers through physical and psionic might. Hua and Orobi devise a plan however, calling for Valiente, Molotok, Maui, and Columbia to put up a distraction to grab Mendrogan's attention while Hua analyzes Mendrogan's abilities and feeds the needed information to Orobi to prepare a spell that actually manages to pierce Mendrogan's psionic barriers and causes the creature injury, causing a pause to the fight as Mendrogan drops to the ground and is rattled from the mystical attack. Mendrogan however, snarls that their attempts at dealing with them are futile, as Mendrogan's fleet starts to appear in earth orbit and the creature teleports itself and its guard to its flagship; leaving behind some important equipment as the first movie in the serial ends in a cliff hanger.