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 four normal seven-year-olds in Galveston. They go to school. They eat too many snacks. Three of them lose at video games to the fourth one constantly. Nobody at school has any idea. Because when the sea turns mean, these four are the only thing standing in its way. Together, they are the Tide Trio — which is the wrong number, and has been ever since Madison turned up, and not one of them is willing to be the person who changes it.
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 others combine. Without the Keystone, the team is four. 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 others, pointed a different direction again. That is the secret of the team: powers that rhyme but never match.
EarthStormStone ArmorWind SpeedThe clever one, and the dangerous one, which people rarely expect to be the same person. Madison reads everything she can get her hands on and forgets none of it — a walking library with a door in it. When something comes up out of the Tidegate she is the one who can say what it is, what beat it the last time, and which page that was on. She can blink from one place to another, run the next ten seconds of a fight like sums in her head, and throw a dome of light over the whole team when it all goes wrong. She is also the best hand-to-hand fighter of the four by a long way. Corban trains in taekwondo; Madison spars with him and Madison wins. She will not throw the first punch, though. Not ever.
All of which should make her unbeatable, and does not. She can only blink to somewhere she has actually seen. The odds she runs are odds, not the future, and the one move they never contain is Corban inventing an element that did not exist ten seconds ago. And holding the dome over four people costs her everything she has: while it is up she cannot blink, cannot strike, and cannot help. Her light gathers around her when she is working something out, which is how the others know to stop talking.
GeniusWalking LibraryPhotographic MemoryTeleportationRuns The OddsForce FieldClose CombatTruesightThe 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 kids doing ordinary kid 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.
Not everything that goes wrong in a seaside town is the end of the world. Most weeks it is one of these. They have silly names and they are not joking, and not one of them is beaten by hitting it harder. Every single one of them loses to somebody working out what the power actually costs.
A man in cargo shorts and a bucket hat who is exactly as strong as whoever he is fighting. Not stronger. Exactly. Which sounds unbeatable and is actually his whole problem, because it means he can never get ahead either. Jackson beat him by sitting down. Steve went home at four.
Matches YouUnremarkableBeaten by: stoppingEverything within thirty feet goes slightly damp. Not wet. Damp. Books curl, crisps go soft, and the school librarian considers him the most dangerous villain in Galveston because he is the only one who has ever destroyed a library book. He is also miserable inside his own power and has not had a dry sock since it happened.
Ambient DampnessRuins PaperBeaten by: a hairdryer, or kindnessA small furious man almost entirely covered in seagulls. He commands nine hundred birds and cannot command his own front door, which sticks. The gulls are mercenaries: a better chip is a better offer, and the whole flock changes sides in the middle of the fight.
Commands the GullsBeaten by: better chipsAn enormous calm man in a dressing gown who can put an entire beach to sleep with one yawn. He has never hurt anybody in his life and the Trio still take him seriously, because he has done it twice at high tide. His power is contagious, which means it gets him too, so the longer he wins the closer he is to losing.
Contagious YawnBeaten by: Jackson laughingAn ordinary man with one enormous flip-flop where his left foot should be. He can slap a car over. He cannot run, climb stairs, or swim, and he loses the flip-flop in wet sand about every four minutes. Hudson beat him with a set of steps and did not even have to say anything.
The Left FootBeaten by: stairsA beautifully dressed villain with a scarf over his mouth and a genuinely brilliant plan that nobody has ever understood, including his own henchmen. It has never once been carried out. Madison can understand him perfectly. He found that thrilling for about ten seconds and has regretted it ever since.
A Brilliant PlanBeaten by: himself, every timeClaims to legally own the beach. Does not. Has, however, filed about it. Carries a clipboard and a laminated badge he made himself, and can make anything Somebody Else’s Problem. He respects a correctly filled-in form more than he respects winning, so Hudson beat him with one, in triplicate, and he shook Hudson’s hand afterwards.
PaperworkBeaten by: a better formA silent figure in oilskins carrying a plain metal bucket with the sea in it. He has never said a word in any book and the bucket has never spilled, not once, not even when he runs. This is the frightening one, and it is played completely straight. It also has a handle, and in Book Three a seven-year-old simply takes it.
The Sea, In A BucketBeaten by: the handleThey steal spellings. This is the crew behind the Spelling Academy, and every one of them is beaten by knowing the rule they break, which is the point of them.
She is not a Dark Unicorn. She has applied twice. The Legion says she is pastel; she says that is prejudice. She steals the right spelling and leaves a believable fake, and she cannot resist showing you the fake first, which is exactly how you beat her every single time. Tell her she did a good job and she forgets what she was doing.
Spelling TheftBelievable FakesBeaten by: watching the tellHe takes the E off the end of a word and never says anything at all. cape becomes cap. kite becomes kit. hope becomes hop. Put the E back and he is gone that second, and he cannot touch a word that never had one, so hat and run and stop are safe from him. A child who knows that has already beaten him.
Takes The EBeaten by: putting it backTwin sisters who insist, loudly and constantly, that they are one villain. She doubles the letters that should be single and singles the ones that should be double. She has never once managed to say her own name without getting stuck on the second b, and while she is stuck every word she stole goes back where it came from.
DoublingBeaten by: her own nameA small hovering comma in a top hat who puts apostrophes where they do not belong. BANANA’S. HALF PRICE. He is the reason the chip shop sign has been repainted eleven times. Madison beats him in about four seconds and he has stopped pretending otherwise; he now takes streets she does not walk down.
Misplaced PossessionBeaten by: Madison, instantlyThe 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.