Historical Overview
"In the beginning, there was nothing. Nothing but the potential of a multiverse. Quantum probability. Magic."
This is how the Supreme Sorceress of Earth's dimension once described the universe. A scientist might choose different words, but the essential meaning would be the same. Approximately 14 billion years ago, the multiverse sprang into existence from nothing. The multiverse is not a single universe but an infinity of them existing simultaneously in multi-dimensional space.
A number of these universes will eventually become important in our story, but for now we only need to consider one of them: the one that, for lack of a better naming convention, we will simply call "our universe".
For fourteen billion years, our universe expanded and evolved, and life sprang up on several planets. The universe is big, and fourteen billion years is a long time, and so countless civilizations rose and fell before our own. A few of these will impact our story, but for the most part we can ignore them.
The first civilization that is actually important to our story arose on Earth roughly 12 thousand years ago on a island in the Atlantic ocean. Subsequent writers called it "Atlantis". The Atlanteans were more advanced in technology and in magic than any other proto-civilization on Earth. They were powerful enough that their actions caused repercussions through the millennia, repercussions which were still felt in the 20th century and beyond.
Atlantis fell, and vanished into myth. Thousands of years passed before an equivalent civilization arose, and again we can gloss over those millennia — there are stories to be told of those years, but none which need to concern us now.
Instead we can move forward to a ten-year period beginning in 1983. This was the first great era of super-heroes, and it is with the appearance of Strikeforce in 1987 that our story truly begins.
Strikeforce existed for a little over five years, but in those years they had more impact on the history of Earth than any other group. After they vanished from Earth there was a 20 year lull in noteworthy activity, until a new generation of heroes arose to replace Strikeforce. These heroes burned brightly but briefly, and with their passing...
...well, that is something we will get to, in time.