Wildguard is a collection of comic book mini-series written and drawn by fan favorite penciler Todd Nauck, about a Made-for-TV superhero team assembled in an American Idol style auditions through auidence voting at wildguard.com
The first mini-series received critical acclaim and coverage from many comic book writers, review sites and TV Guide.
The following titles have been released: Wildguard: Casting Call, Wildguard: Firepower, Wildguard: Fool's Gold and Wildguard: Insider.
This comic book series provides examples of:
- Alien Invasion
- All of the Other Reindeer Wandering Eye
- All There in the Manual The series website provides a considerable detail on Backstory and such.
- Alternate Company Equivalent Several
- Amazonian Beauty: Barbrazon and Brawna
- An Ice Person: Freezerburn
- Animal Superheroes Jun-Go's animal guardians
- Ascended Fanboy Red Rover
- Badass Normal: Wannabe seems to have legitimately formidable combat capabilities
- Barrier Warrior The Human Shield
- But Not Too Foreign: Grimli Impdore
- Cat Girl: Kit-en, who, fittingly enough, is a big time heroine in her native Japan.
- Chest Blaster: Blast Sternum can fire powerful beams from a plate in his chest.
- Chick Magnet: The Romancer, as one of his powers.
- The City Servo City, to be precise
- Civvie Spandex
- Color Character Red Rover, Crimson Phantom Vengeance
- Combo Platter Powers Freezerburn. Four, too, but she can only use one power at a time.
- Computer Voice: Motherboard can store up to 10 picabytes and, when she was younger, was larger than most rooms.
- Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: Running Girl is a speedster who had her own shoe deal even before she debuted as a superhero. Currently, the deal's pending — she didn't make Wildguard and the contract stipulates she be on a team. Human Shield mentioned being contacted by home security and plastic bag companies to act as a spokesman, but didn't say whether he was actually going for it.
- Dark Age of Supernames: Parodied with Crimson Phantom Vengeance, a Batman-style vigilante (eliminated in the first round of competition as "not what we're looking for") and Mr. Transmuto, whose fashion sense is stuck in the 90s, as well. Also Red Rover's enemy Heartwyrm. The name "Wildguard" itself kind of smacks of this trope, though.
- Day in the Limelight: Webstrips and subsequent minis have focused on minor characters.
- Dumb Muscle:
- The Lifter ("If I don't lift, I die, man.") and Mover, who tried to develop another super-identity without realizing that his size gave him away immediately, among others. The Romancer and American Icon are borderline.
- Human Shield, arguably; while he doesn't show elements of this in the series, his contest bio notes that he only recently overcame his struggle with illiteracy.
- Environment-Specific Action Figure: Wannabe already has multiple costumes for different situations for maximum marketability. Like, how many action figures could you really inspire with just one look?
- Expy:
- Little Miss Sunshine -the blue-dressed, skirt-wearing, caped, blonde female Flying Brick with light-generating powers- is a Supergirl expy.
- Snapback is the Plastic Man expy.
- Face–Heel Turn
- Faceless Eye: Wandering Eye is an evil alien resembling a giant floating eye and masquerading as a superhero.
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: Wannabe answers the mail after a while.
- Fun Personified Shrubling
- Genius Bruiser - Minor background scrub Doc Clobber
- Gondor Calls for Aid
- Green Thumb - Shrubling, again.
- Humongous Mecha Strong-Bot is a pretty big robot, but he disguised himself as a larger, more marketable robot to seem more viable for the team.
- I Believe I Can Fly
- I'm Not a Doctor, but I Play One on TV - According to his bio, this is the case for Dr. Wattage.
- Intercontinuity Crossover: Wildguard is an established part of Image's larger universe, and it's not uncommon for characters from it to show up in other books.
- Jerkass - Toughlon is generally considered one by fans and teammates, but he's just eager. The Ultra Super Mega Five, on the other hand, are the real deal.
- Legacy Character American Icon, Conductra, the Shingle, and Sprints McAfree.
- Luckily, My Powers Will Protect Me Exploding Girl... usually. She can produce an explosion of up to 25 megatons, but she can only do that once.
- Mars Needs Women: Mortoc Vekk masquerades as Jun-Go to choose a mate among the heroes attending the auditions. He chooses Ignacia. Exploding Girl later laments that Octorilla went after her immediately, noting that monsters always seem to go for the women first. Astro Girl tells her that this is true of many space creatures as well.
- Merchandise-Driven Wannabe and Road Rage come to auditions with their toys and costume variants
- No Celebrities Were Harmed Four is modeled after Jennifer Garner among others. The Romancer is pretty obviously based on Fabio. Dorsal Head resembles Vin Diesel.
- Not Quite Dead - Crag Langley was crushed into dust, but they said he might not be quite dead and the process might be reversible.
- Not Wearing Tights Ignacia, Travel Agent, and, particularly, Crag Langley, who "looks really stupid wearing a shirt."
- Outdated Outfit Mister Transmuto still thinks the Badass Longcoat over spandex look from the 1990s is cool; when recruited by the Phenomeneers and given a uniform he specifically mourns the loss of his old look.
- Popularity Power Freezerburn was originally going to die in #4, until the polls showed him to be one of the most popular characters.
- Playing with Fire (Ignacia, Freezerburn)
- The Pollyanna - Little Miss Sunshine
- Product Placement: An ad in the trade paperback shows Four-Teen stopping Speeding Skull with Hostris Fruit Pies.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy - Scattermane, a superfast ambassador from a tribe of lion-men whose natural feline preference for privacy hurts his chances pretty harshly.
- Punch-Clock Hero - Super Temp, who's just doing the hero thing until his band hits it big. It does.
- Punny Name Just about everywhere
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Subverted slightly by Motherboard, who is actually more of a humanoid computer and is visibly nonhuman.
- Rubber Man - Snapback and Longfellow.
- She Is All Grown Up Teri Vaughan
- Shout-Out Like any Todd Nauck book, it's littered with MST3K and Scrubs references.
- Sizeshifter - Blaction Figure and Jack Giant.
- Stalker with a Crush Mortoc Vekk and The Woman in Red
- Super Hero
- Superhero Speciation Subverted. The final team has two members with fire powers and no one who can fly or has particularly super strength.
- In a more general sense, there were at least two heroes representing every power set in the tryouts; Running Girl, Flatfoot, and Scattermane were all speedsters, for instance; Super Temp and Strong-Bot were both Flying Bricks, Longfellow and Snapback were both Rubber Men; Toughlon, the Lifter, the Mover, Crag Langley, Barbrazon, the Romancer, and American Icon (to name but a few) are all just really strong...
- Training "Accident" (The plot of the original miniseries. It actually happens twice!)
- Useless Superpowers Adhesor has sticky skin. It doesn't take long to backfire. Toughlon is super strong and durable, but he's also completely non-stick (like, you know, teflon). Little Miss Sunshine can emit beams of light that, while very bright, are only harmful to vampires.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Mr. Mold's power.
- Waiting for a Break: Super Temp, who's just doing the whole superhero thing until his band hits it big. It does — because of the publicity generated by his appearance on the show.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Dorsal Head specifically refers to this when discussing why he wasn't ultimately chosen for the team; He feels that as an aquatic hero, it's easy to be pegged as "only useful in a 'water' situation."
- Yandere:
- Wannabe, all the way. She's obsessed with becoming a famous heroine and won't let anything get in the way of it.
- Lilly Hammer's getting to be this way a little too, with her intense jealousy of Ignacia's popularity.
