THE SUPER CORBAN UNIVERSE
Everything you need to know to read, write, and live inside the story.
Three best friends. Same age. Same town. Secret powers that are almost the same, but not quite. And one rule that runs the whole universe: the powers come from courage, and courage was put there by God.
And the world does not stay small. It starts in a normal neighborhood far from any ocean, and every book pushes the Trio farther: down the highway to the coast, out across far waters, and finally into the deep places no map has ever shown.
This is the map. It locks who everyone is, what they can do, and where the whole ten-book story is going, so every book lines up and nothing contradicts. Read it like the playbook behind the comics.
By day they are three normal seven-year-olds in Galveston. They go to school. They eat too many snacks. Two of them lose at video games to the third one constantly. Nobody at school has any idea. Because when the sea turns mean, these three are the only thing standing in its way. Together, they are the Tide Trio.
The leader. The brave one. Trains in taekwondo and never quits a fight he should. Corban is the rarest kind of hero in the whole world: a Keystone. He can fly, and he can use any element. Not just the normal ones. He can reach for elements nobody has ever invented yet and pull them into being. He is the piece that lets the other two combine. Without the Keystone, the team is three. With him, the team is one.
FlightCourage-LightAny ElementWild ElementsTaekwondoThe steady one. The heart of the team. Hudson commands water and ice. He can raise a wall of waves, freeze a monster solid, and heal his friends with clean water when they get knocked down. When everyone else wants to charge, Hudson is the one who thinks first. Same kind of power as Corban, pointed a different direction.
WaterIceShieldsHealing WatersThe powerhouse. The fast one. Jackson commands earth and storm. He can throw boulders, armor his fists in stone, run like wind, and call down lightning. He laughs in the middle of fights, which drives the villains crazy. Same kind of power as the other two, pointed a different direction again. That is the secret of the team. Three powers that rhyme but never match.
EarthStormStone ArmorWind SpeedThe Tide Trio do not live at the beach. They live where most kids live, in a regular neighborhood with regular driveways, regular bedtimes, and a regular amount of homework nobody wants to do. The ocean is not out their back door. It is a road trip away.
And that matters, because half the adventure is getting there. Every time the sea calls, the boys have to figure out how to reach it without their parents finding out, which is harder than fighting any monster. Some books open with a long, funny, bumpy drive to the coast. Some open with a school field trip that goes sideways. The travel is part of the fun, and it is how the world keeps getting bigger.
Their ride is the Wave Runner. By day it looks like a totally normal van. Press the hidden shell on the dashboard and it folds itself into a sleek silver craft that can race down the highway, skim across the waves, and dive straight under the sea. It is fast, it is loud, and Jackson is absolutely not allowed to drive it, which has never once stopped him from trying.
Here is how power works in this world, and it never changes, no matter which book you are in.
Every power, for all three of them, is fueled by real courage. The kind you choose when you are scared and step forward anyway. When they are brave, the lights on their chests blaze. When fear wins, the lights go dim and the powers fade. This is the engine of every story. The monster is never really the water or the rock. The monster is the fear, and courage is how you beat it.
Most heroes get water, fire, earth, air. Boring. The Tide Trio can also use the Wild Elements, powers that do not exist anywhere else because they made them up. Corban can invent brand new ones in the middle of a fight. The known Wild Elements so far: Glimmer (light that blinds bad guys), Echo (sound you can throw), Stardust (it makes things float), Gloop (sticky goo that traps mooks), Dreamfire (cold blue flame that does not burn the good guys), and the rarest one of all, Courage itself, which can be handed from one friend to another when somebody runs out.
One hero is strong. Two is stronger. But when all three touch their wrist-shells at the same time, their elements braid together into one blast called the Triple Tide, and almost nothing survives it. And for the very worst monsters, the ones too big for even that, the three of them can fully merge into a single giant guardian called the Tidal Titan. They can only hold the Titan for a short time, and only when their courage is perfectly in sync. So they save it for when it counts.
This is the rule that keeps it fun. The Tide Trio never tell anyone who they are. Not teachers, not classmates, not even most of their family. By day they are ordinary boys doing ordinary boy things. By night, and whenever the ocean screams, they are guardians. The whole series lives in the gap between those two lives, the homework and the sea monsters, and the comedy comes from how hard it is to keep the secret.
On land, they fight in tech suits. But the second they go under the water, they transform. Scales ripple up their arms, tails replace their legs, and armor made of coral and pearl locks into place. These are their Tide Warrior forms, half boy and half warrior merman, each carrying a weapon shaped from their element: Corban a glowing spear, Hudson a frozen trident, Jackson a stone war-hammer. Underwater, they are unstoppable. This is how they fight the deep monsters in their own home.
Their headquarters hides in plain sight. On the beach sits an ordinary, slightly lopsided sandcastle that tourists walk right past. Press the seashell on the top turret, and the sand opens like a door. An elevator drops down, and down, and down, into the Sandcastle, an enormous base built into a cavern beneath the dunes with a glass wall looking straight out into the deep sea. Inside: the launch bay, the training room, the snack station (very important), and the Glow Pool that powers everything.
The Sandcastle does not run on electricity. It runs on the Tide Fairies, tiny glowing creatures from the reef who keep the Glow Pool lit and the gadgets humming. Their leader is Pip, a fast-talking fairy the size of a thumb who has opinions about everything, especially the boys' plans, which she thinks are usually terrible right up until they work. The fairies deliver messages, heal wounds, and in an emergency can lend a hero a quick burst of a Wild Element. They are also the only ones besides the Trio who know where the Wild Elements truly come from, which is a secret saved for late in the series.
The threats get bigger every book, climbing a ladder toward one final darkness.
The story does not stay on one beach. It grows. Every book pushes the Trio a little farther from home and a little deeper into a world most people never see. Here is how the map opens up across the series:
The further they travel, the more the world reveals, and the clearer it becomes that the sea is far bigger, far older, and far stranger than three seven-year-olds ever imagined.