Following a comment by Christopher in another thread, I was investigating the cards in Dawn's deck to see if there was any hint to Mad Bomber Blade's first appearance being during the "Sunrise" event. What I noticed is that Dawn's first appearance was Freedom Five #239, but Tachyon has a quote about Dawn in FF #238. What does anyone make of that?
Dawn's a little famous as a metahuman. Since Tachyon is essentially a metahuman, I wouldn't be surprised if she researched Dawn and probably knew a bit about her before meeting her, or Tachyon met her off camerea.
They could have gone to Dawn, in which case she would be found out before she was in a comic.
The quote is "Dawn's ability to manipulate life forces has obvious combat applications" (it's on Luminous Leadership). Mad Bomber Baron Blade's first appearance is FF #258 at the end of the Sunrise story-arc. (As an aside, I've actually long suspected that the names of the comics listed are not the titles of the comics themselves, but of the story arcs, but that might be one of those things that I'm just the last person to realize. The quote in the other thread from Christopher seems to confirm that.)
Most, if not all, of the quotes from Citizens in Dawn's deck are from issues of Sunrise. So let's assume that Sunrise starts in FF #239 and ends 20 issues later with the first apperance of Mad Bomber. Twenty issues would certainly qualify as a "major story arc" and it makes sense because the quote from Channel the Eclipse sounds like a last stand ("WIll my powers kill me? Certailnly, but they will surely kill you first!") comes from Sunrise #14. The very next issue has a quote from Return with the Dawn ("Like the dawning sun, rise again and bring light to this darkened world!") which implies a mass second effort on the part of Dawn and Co. which could certainly last another several issues.
My point in all this is that I wondered why Tachyon had intel on Dawn and who she is sharing it with in that quote. When I wrote my original post I was thinking that maybe Tachyon is giving a briefing because the F5 were planning a military action against Dawn. This being before her first appearance, it would seem pretty diabolical for the F5 to attack her without motivation (presumably in Insula Primalis), unless Christopher was making a direct analogy to the real life search for WMDs in Iraq. That seems unlikely so I've reconsidered: What if Tachyon was briefing the rest of the F5 with intent to RECRUIT Dawn, and it wasn't until they got to Insula Primalis that they found she had already recruited her own followers and consolidated a power base. She probably wouldn't be too welcoming to government interference in her plans...
OH! I just noticed that Visionary has a quote in Dawn's deck too. Maybe Dawn turned out to be a hero in Visionary's timeline and it was her knowledge of the future that provided the intel to Tachyon to seek out Dawn in the first place! They could have been recruiting people for the inevitable attack of Iron Legacy or something. Plus, IIRC, Citizens Truth and Dare are alumni of Project Cocoon. Maybe Visionary knew of them from her timeline and thought she would find allies in them as well.
Characters can be known and talked about in the comic worlds before they first actually show up in the comics. I imagine Dawn was a known meta human for quite some time and likely the F5 knew about her. A first apperance in a comic doesn't have to mean that its the first time the heros ever learn about them, just its the first time you see them in the comic is all.
Visionary has a quote in one of the comics exactly one issue before her first apperance as well. It's not an uncommon thing.
That's what happens when you're a time traveler.
Can we place Expatriette’s first appearance?