Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Hero Project 5: Rogues Gallery Part Two

See:  The pilotPart OnePart TwoPart Three. Part Four.

First of the rest: 

Sleetman

If Kinkajou and Clydesdale were sympathetic, Sleetman was the villain you were supposed to love to hate. No tragic backstory, although he of course plays the victim of an unfair world in his own narrative. Basically just a prick. I think he was the first rogue recorded. 

In terms of power set, he was a scaled-down, more "realistic" version of Captain Cold or Mr. Freeze, with a more localized hand-held instant-chiller thing. He started out with a long, dramatic cloak but that soon turned into more of a hoodie.

In terms of personality, he was greedy, cruel, nasty, self-serving, underhanded, mean, cheap - almost no redeeming qualities. An out-and out villain.







The rest of the rogues:

The Bulleteers

This group of terrorist/extortionists was a direct rip from Fleischer Superman cartoon. Just go watch that for what I was going for here. They're in the public domain now, right?



Cormorant

Inspired by the Japanese custom of using birds for fishing, Cormorant was a shadowy figure who used flying automata to commit his crimes (remember, this predates quadcopters and drones). I think the gimmick would have been that the robo-birds would be stopped but that their mysterious controller would always get away.




Doppelganger

Doppelganger was inspired by G.R.R. Martin's novelette Meathouse Man, but instead of cybernetically controlling corpses, this rogue controls mindless android bodies much more powerful his own. I liked the ideas that the androids were lifeless without his consciousness animating them (sort of like the bodies T.H.U.N.D.E.R.'s No-Man used) and the visual of  his sometimes subconsciously having them duplicate his movements (kiped from a scene in the story).


Handyman

Handyman was another character who was meant to be a little more sympathetic. He was basically a scavenger who took tech left behind by other rogues and leveraged it for his own purposes. Below are his low-tech mode and his "just found a whole bunch of good stuff" look.




Kelpie

Kelpie was the underwater rogue- an underwater hero, Amphibian, showed up later, and maybe you'll get to meet him someday. A little mermaid in here and a little of DC's Dolphin (the original incarnation), and she doesn't have the shape-shift qualities of her namesake water spirit.







Kobold

I don't remember too much about this guy, except he was the underground rogue, tunneling and stuff.


Lord Lewis

The name is intentionally ironic, because this guy is my take on a working-class Lex Luthor. Lewis started out as a union organizer, and when his power of super-charisma (like that of a version of King in one iteration of the Royal Flush Gang) revealed itself, he started to do more in the way of self-aggrandizing and less in the way of labor activism. Sort of a combination of Marvel's Purple Man and Sylvester Stallone in F.I.S.T.



Nimrod

Named for the king who (may have) shot an arrow at Yahweh from the top of the tower of Babel, and who was identified in the Bible as a "mighty hunter". He fills the contract assassin character niche in the Tharkiverse, and has the hubris of his namesake.


PAX

Like the Bulleteers, PAX is a they. The name is the common shorthand for the Peace in Action Committee, a right-wing, fundamentalist organization functioning as a militia/volunteer security force/what have you. Operating theoretically under the color of law, they would prove a problem for The Bravos as they chose to implement their own political agenda regardless of legal technicalities. PAX agents were equipped with high-tech gear provided by an anonymous donor and perhaps bear a passing resemblance to Jack Kirby's Justifiers.



Ptolemy Tyne

Tyne is the genius-intellect master criminal who looks down on Kinkajou and Clydesdale as rank amateurs, at Handyman as an embarrassment, and Doppelganger as a novelty act. He is rich, untouchable, arrogant, conceited, condescending, and extremely talented. He started out in a  bit of a super-suit but then just went to utility pants and turtleneck.








Skate

Let's face it, he's here simply because Marvel's Stingray (my namesake Walter Newell) was always one of my favorite characters. That's all.


Swarm

Some sort of collective intelligence/hive-mind kinda deal, I suppose...


Whisk'r

A stealthy rogue-for-hire mercenary operative with a pet cat, although in the first image it looks to be a fox, so maybe it's a fox, and the second image is a woman, so maybe this character concept never really solidified, eh?



Next up: Action!

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