Spencer, who manifests his father's shapeshifting ability, takes on the codename Myriad, and works to protect Tower City with his newly discovered brothers and sisters. After fighting crime alongside his siblings for less than a year, Spencer, in losing consciousness after swimming from the team's flooded underwater headquarters to the surface, is rendered unconscious, and is revealed to have a bizarre, alien-like appearance. Confronted by his siblings, he reveals that one of the women with whom Captain Dynamo had an affair was an alien whom Dynamo met in deep space when he came to the aid of her crippled starship. After aiding in its repairs, he journeyed with her crew to her home planet, where he and the woman had an affair that resulted in her pregnancy. Because of the cultural taboo of raising a "half-breed" on her world, she journeyed to Earth after Spencer was born to leave him in Dynamo's custody. Dynamo, however, had no interest in raising Spencer or threatening his marriage, so he left Spencer in the custody of a F.L.A.G. (Foundation for Law and Government) research facility, telling them not that Spencer was his son, but that he found the infant at an alien crash site. Spencer's home for the next few years was the research compound, where scientists subjected him to extensive study and experimentation, including exposing him to the same radiation that gave Captain Dynamo his superhuman abilities, not knowing what effect it would have on the child. This exposure activated Spencer's shapeshifting ability, long before he met Maddie Warner. He learned how to use this power to disguise his alien appearance, and to mimic the appearance of people around him, but one of the scientists in particular, an African-American woman named Dr. Bridges, took a liking to Spencer, and the two formed a rapport. The other scientists were not amenable to their bond, and separated the two. Unable to convince Captain Dynamo to remove Spencer from the facility, Bridges had Spencer use his shapeshifting ability to smuggle him out of the compound. Knowing that she would be discovered by F.L.A.G. if she attempted to raise Spencer on her own, she placed Spencer, who maintained the appearance of a full human, in the care of child services, and never saw him again. Spencer spent his childhood in an orphanage, and was placed in a succession of less-than-ideal foster homes, and struck out on