MAJOR DEEJ UNIVERSE

Johnny G. Campbell, was an orphan, an ex-cop and an ex-circus trick shooter who eventually went on to become a licensed electrician and powerline technician for a telephone company. As a lineman in Wichita, Oklahoma, sadly, he eventually lost his job due to all the new cell phone tower big business cutting out the old analog wired communications and power lines. Jobless, he instead started wandering Oklahoma and Texas, making his way to Galveston on his way to Phoenix in his old Mustang convertible, going down Route 66 as part of a 'bucket list' item he'd always wanted to do, all the while, hoping to find work along the way.  

There, while enjoying the food in a diner outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico on Route 66, a drug-crazed Arkansas Farmboy walked into the diner, the 'True Grit'. The crazed boy demanded to know where Suzie was to tell him the location of a playground, but fell into a depressed spell of repeatedly saying "gone, gone, gone" and then started shooting up the diner with a pair of Magnum Revolvers. Campbell, in a pure act of heroism jumped through the gunfire and stopped the madman before anyone was hurt. One person who witnessed the entire event wrote about the event in an artistic manner for the Santa Fe newspaper, mentioning how at one point:

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'...Our cowboy-looking hero seemed to move in slow motion, surrounded by ice flying through the air from the Arkansas Farmboy's shots hitting the ice machine, causing the ice to fly into the air all about our hero as our hero disarmed the shooter all in a hail of bullets and madness. The ice, in that moment, glistened like rhinestones against our cowboy hero's image, likening him to the famous song "Rhinestone Cowboy". After the police arrived and all was told, our hero...our 'Rhinestone Cowboy' rode out in his Mustang convertible amidst the red, white and blue lights of the police cars, almost likening it to a star spangled rodeo. If ever there was an epitomized hero to song, this man is 'the Rhinestone Cowboy'.'

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The Albuquerque mayor wanted to present Johnny with a John Campbell Day Proclamation for his heroic endeavors, but Johnny had already left town. The mayor, looking for ANY positive publicity out of this, set the media to go find him and 'usher' Johnny back to receive his special proclamation. ​Before Johnny could make it to Arizona, he was tracked down by the media and swarmed at another diner.

 

The next day, Johnny returned to Albuquerque to receive his 'proclamation' and a reward of $10,000 (along with a discount book to any and all the businesses of Albuquerque) for his efforts. In a formal ceremony, not only was he awarded his proclamation and the money, but the citizens made a 'Rhinestone Cowboy'-looking costume that was more of a gag-gift than a serious gift. To end the ceremony, they played Glenn Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" song as he left the stage. Relatively embarrassed by the media exposure, he suffered through the spotlight and into the night where he was also put up in a privately-owned Route 66 motel 'for free, forever' deal.

 

That night, after cashing his check and stuffing a $100 bill down into a hidden sheath inside his boot (as well as his old 'lucky' subway token his father had given him as a kid, telling him to NEVER lose it or not have it on him since it would help make 'time go by much slower' having it), he stepped out to get some ice only to come face to face with the rest of the Arkansas Farmboy's drug-dealing 'friends'. They 'heard' that there was a 'Rhinestone Cowboy' in town that beat up their friend and seems to have come into some money and that they wanted to 'get to know' this cowboy. They immediately dragged Johnny back to his motel room and started beating him, all while tearing apart the room looking for his money. When they found the money, they also found the $100 bill and subway token hidden in his boot. They took the $100 (along with the rest of the money), leaving a severely beaten Johnny on the floor. When Johnny reached out shakily to grab the discarded token, one of the thugs stabbed Johnny right through his hand and into the Subway token, splitting the token in two.

 

That's when everything changed.

 

To Johnny, EVERYTHING went into slow motion.

 

It wasn't perception...EVERYTHING was slow...except him.

 

He punched the thug who stabbed him, but the thug seemed not to hardly react at all.

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Johnny then pulled the knife from his hand, only to notice the token was glowing a chaotic white-gold color, as was the blood on his hands from the wound. Within seconds (to Johnny) the taken 'dissolved' while Johnny's hands seemed to glow the same white-gold color.

 

Johnny then got up, still realizing that time was still VERY slow, like at a framerate of 5 frames per minute of EVERONE and EVERYTHING around him. Not sure what to think of this, his 'fight or flight' senses told him to fight...and fight he did. Before any of the time-slowed characters could react at all, Johnny had beaten each and every one of them severely, all while taking their guns, knives and phones. He even tied up one thug before the thug could hit the ground from the beating Johnny gave him. Suddenly, with only a couple of seconds of warbling sound in his ears, he was back to regular time.

 

The thugs were beaten, knocked out, tied up and had their weapons removed.

 

Johnny immediately called the police.

 

After the next day or two of interviews, police reports and getting his wounds tended to, Johnny was once again called a hero. The Mayor had a special meeting with Johnny offering him a 'special' job of helping to promote Albuquerque in the media with him using his 'Rhinestone' fame. Johnny said he'd think about it, but was being polite; he didn't intend to be someone's puppet poster boy. Instead, Johnny went back to the police station to sign some forms and do a formal line-up. While there in the police station, Johnny saw that the drug-dealers and meth labs in the area had left a mob of innocent victims in the station reporting shootings, deaths, massive property damage and of course robberies. Lots of robberies. It was then that a young Pueblo tribe Native-American woman wailed at hearing her son had died in the hospital from gunshots wounds done by a home invasion robbery. 

 

Johnny, being an ex-cop was incensed at all of this.

 

Johnny talked to the police there, but realized quickly that due to 'defund the police' movements and budget cuts, the police force was less than 1/2 of what it once was, while crime had skyrocketed to over 300% in less than a year.  Johnny knew he had to do something, but what?

 

After mulling it over in a non-crime scene room of the same Route 66 motel, Johnny decided he may need to reapply to be a policeman again and help these folks out. He was still freaked out about the 'slowed time' thing that had happened to him before, but associated that to, most likely, his mind not 'working on all cylinders' as a result of his beating. He instead dismissed the 'freak' event as adrenaline and filed it into his memories as 'whatever that was'.

 

Over the next month, Johnny signed up for the Albuquerque police and got retrained and processed. His 'media status' and the mayor immediately put Johnny with an auto-promoted rank of Sergeant right off the bat. The mayor continued to 'overstep' his position by awarding Johnny two Magnum revolver pistols (much like Dirty Harry weapons from the movie series) with the expectation to 'wear and use them as part of the job'.  The media, of course, LOVED to blast the images of Sergeant 'Rhinestone Cowboy' with his 45 Magnum Revolvers, ready to take down crime.  Johnny suffered through the media and politics, all the while actually doing his new duty as a police officer.

 

During this time, a handful of super-powered and skilled national 'police' heroes from the Peacekeepers, arrived in Albuquerque to search for and arrest a Death Legion super-powered assassin called 'Rattlesnake'.  The mayor INSISTED that Sergeant Campbell be their police liaison for the operation. Eventually, they found Rattlesnake's lair, but also discovered it was a trap for the Peacekeepers. All five of the Peacekeepers were wounded and/or captured, along with several police officers that were along on the raid, including Johnny.

 

Johnny was bound and gagged on the floor, while Rattlesnake and his Death Legion cohorts continued to beat and maim the other police and Peacekeeper superheroes. When one of Johnny's fellow officers, Sammy, who had a wife and three kids was stabbed by Rattlesnake, Johnny lost it. In so doing, his hands felt funny again...and as before, EVERYONE and EVERYTHING in the lair slowed to a crawl.

 

Time had once again slowed down for him.

 

Shocked, but taking advantage of this, Johnny broke out of his bonds, got up and regained his gun belt and magnum revolvers all before Rattlesnake could reel around to even see him. Rattlesnake, once he started moving, was actually very fast, but thanks to this 'slowed time', Rattlesnake seemed to move at 1/4 the speed of normal time. This gave Johnny a massive advantage. To summarize the encounter, Johnny not only beat Rattlesnake and the other Death Legionnaires that had ambushed them, but also freed his fellow cops and the Peacekeepers to aid in the all-out battle that ensued when Johnny's slow-time finally ran out.  Johnny did get shot in the arm by one of the Legionnaire assassins, but it wasn't a critical wound.

 

Thanks to the Peacekeepers hidden video footage, they saw what looked like Johnny operating as incredible speeds for a few seconds as he escaped his bonds and fought and beat up Rattlesnake and started freeing the other police and Peacekeepers. The leader of the Peacekeepers field team, Major Order, deduced Johnny to have some form of super-powers and demanded he be tested. Johnny agreed, but was unsure of what any of this would result in. 

 

After testing, it was found that Johnny has a strange 'temporal' energy running through his blood, marking him as 'super-powered'. As per the Super-Powered Registration Act (SRA), Johnny was legally not allowed to remain an Albuquerque police officer anymore and had to resign or be placed 'under arrest' if he didn't register, as Major Order put it. Johnny, perplexed with the heavy-handed tone of Major Order, got into a bit of a verbal argument with him, stating that he WOULD register, but that upsetting his career and threatening him like that was inhumane and cruel. Major Order stated that he didn't like Johnny because he believed Johnny was nothing more than a 'drifter' who'd most likely put the super-community to shame in a matter of time due to his 'lackadaisical' mentality. Johnny did NOT see eye-to-eye with Major Order and realized the two would be get along with each other anytime soon.

 

Johnny registered with the SRA and retired from the police force the same day. One of the Peacekeepers (not Major Order) offered Johnny to come join the Peacekeepers and use his powers for good, but Johnny declined, stating that he was for 'law and order' but not the way the Peacekeepers do it.

 

Within days, Johnny was contacted by an ex-football player-turned-mutant called "Alabama".  Alabama saw what had happened on the news and was hoping Johnny could lend a hand to his new team he was putting together called the "Southern Stars". At first, Johnny wasn't interested, but after some discussion, Alabama asked Johnny to 'drive' him (Alabama) back to Atlanta, where the two of them could talk things out along the way...and allow Alabama the chance to prove to Johnny why he was needed as a Southern Stars superhero.

 

Over the next week, Alabama and Johnny drove to Atlanta in Johnny's convertible Mustang. In that time, Alabama showed Johnny the suffering of the people of the South and where he and the Southern Stars could make a difference as regional superheroes rather than national, politically-governed superhero police. In that time Johnny and Alabama became good friends. After arriving at the team's HQ, the Mason Mansion in Atlanta, Georgia, Johnny agreed with Alabama and joined the Southern Stars.

 

Adorned in a modified version of the "Rhinestone Cowboy" costume he was given in Albuquerque, Johnny took the simply name of 'Rhinestone' along with modified .45 Magnum caliber revolvers that now used non-lethal and specialized ammunition.  Rhinestone became an immediate media sensation as a Southern Sentinel and was lauded as a true 'hero of the south' (and of the Southwest and New Mexico, according to Albuquerque's mayor).

Today, as a member of the Southern Stars, Rhinestone continues to get cards and letters from people he doesn't even know, with old folks even leaving him voice mail and text messages on his phone telling him how much they love and cherish him.

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Rhinestone is a brave, no-nonsense type of person. He is courteous, kind, and tips his hats to his elders and ladies. He talks to kids without talking down to them and motivates all those around him to 'do better' and 'help others' when they're down. He's got a massive social media fan following by many young women. He dates on occasion, but usually finds that most are shallow or too self-absorbed. He hasn't found the right partner/lover yet. His skills in marksmanship have dramatically increased in his time with his new team and has become quite an athlete as well, performing a rigorous workout regimen that even Alabama is impressed with.  His humility and self-discipline seemed to have grown in direct correlation to his popularity and responsibility, and although he makes mistakes, he tries his best to correct them each time.

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