The Superhero Creators Covens

Certainly! Give it a go.

Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.

The idea I was contemplating was having three slightly less powered supers team together to do something that a single, more powerful, hero could do.

First off is the bios

Artist

Personal

He is the oldest of the three at 19 and serves as the backbone and leader. of the group. He is Italian, but was raised in New York. He is tall with straw colored hair and blue eyes. Personality wise he is introverted and protective of his younger companions, whom he considers family.

Powers

Has the power to draw an object into life, (ex: he draws a sword in a notepad and then pulls it out). Also will occasionally draw an event (like in Push), but cannot control when he does so and doesn't know what it means.

Geist

Personal

He is the second oldest member at around 16 and serves as the planner and strategist. He is Japanese and has lived in America for about five years. Physically he is the most noticeable of the three; his black hair is streaked with white and his eyes are black with white pupils. He isn't shy, but distances himself from his friends because he's afraid that he'll lose control of his powers and erase everyone.

Powers

Has two powers: Intangibility (not invisibility though), and erasure (causing small objects to fade from existence or at least become less tangible.). He wears special gloves that inhibit his powers and allow him to control them better.

Krono

Personal

He is the youngest of the three, just 14 years old, and is mostly just The Load. He is American of British descent. He is shorter and has blond hair coupled with Eyes of Gold. He is still very much a child and is the most innocent of the three.

Powers

He can see when people will die via a countdown above their heads. This countdown isn't permanent and changes constantly as people make decisions.

All three of them are orphans whose families were killed for reasons they don't know.

edited 24th Jan '11 8:55:36 PM by namboto

Isn't realist just a word a cynic calls himself?

Interesting. I'd recommend giving Krono a power upgrade or something else to keep him from being too Load-y.

These are just start of the series powers, they get stronger as time goes on (and, of course, it's Krono who ends up being the most powerful (though doesn't have as much control over his powers) do we have a trope for that?) Also, his power is fairly usefull, as it would show who is in actual danger.

Origin

They lived in New York and new each other fairly well through a school and a martial arts program they were in. Their comfortable life changed on September 21st, several weeks before the story begins.

Each of them discovered their powers that day, immediately as their families were killed. However, they were not present at the slaughter. Both Krono and Artist were at the dojo, and while Geist had stayed home sick, he'd found a sort of secret sanctum, and was exploring it. At the moment the last of their family died, each person's power was awakened. Krono saw the countdowns, Artist drew the murder scene, and objects around Geist began to disappear.

(In the sanctum Geist found the gloves and his appearance only changed when he put them on.)

Spoilers ahead: these details are not revealed in the beginning of the story. (If I ever actually make this thing...)

Their powers each have to do with a concept or idea that defines humanity. Artist represents imagnination or creativity, Geist is the concept of nothing, and Krono is the concept of mortality. Their families were "immortal lines", bloodlines that go back to the begining that are intimately linked with one of these "human concepts". These bloodlines cannot end, but the powers are transferred only to those that are closest to the original.

Need anything else? (My biggest problem is that I have the heroes and their powers mostly worked out, but I don't really have any ideas for villains)

edited 25th Jan '11 3:54:45 AM by namboto

Isn't realist just a word a cynic calls himself?

Sounds pretty cool. I like it!

I like it! Shows potential :)

Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.

Ongoing thing I'm working on. Had no one else to show it to and I thought you guys might be intrigued.

A short saga of a villain's identity told from his twisted eyes.

The Blog The Art

I got superheros can I join?

With the power of a dragon I can make up for my inability to spill.

First you must write a supervillain secret origin with a pen in between your butt cheeks, then chug a keg of beer and run around without pants on.

I'm a long-time superhero creator for the Champions game system, though the only book I got published on the subject was the "Allies" supplement.

The fellow in my avatar is the Mask of Justice, a Golden Age type character in the vein of the Spirit and the Question. He's Nick Philips, nee Nikolas Philosophos, son of Greek immigrants who Americanized his name to make it easier to get a reporting job.

After an attempt to break up a protection racket endangered his relatives because of the gang's retaliatory tactics, Nick's father gave him a mask supposedly given to an ancestor of theirs by the goddess of Justice. Nick is rather dubious about this story, but the mask did trigger his powers.

Whenever the Mask of Justice's eyes are covered by an opaque object, such as his eyeholeless mask, he gains the ability to "see the truth." He can see in complete darkness, see through objects ala x-ray vision, and see the true form of anything he looks at, no matter what disguise or illusion it wears. In addition, Nick is a Golden Gloves level-boxer, and a skilled investigative reporter.

His one weakness is that plastic, a substance unknown to the ancient Greeks, is completely opaque to his powers. Even the thinnest sheet of cellophane is a total block to the Mask of Justice's vision.

Sounds cool. Is he the guy in your avatar?

Do masked vigilantes who are REALLY GOOD count? If so,I'd like to join.

@Penniless, yep, that is he.

In my personal timeline, the Mask of Justice retires in the 1950s when everything starts being made of plastic, and gets promoted from Intrepid Reporter to Da Editor.

You know, it's odd. I've never created a superhero before, but I always dance the line around a superhero.

I have created something Xmen-esque, which I guess sorta counts, and I created a story with superhero-esque situations, but no actual superheros.

I guess the latter is more of a shonen thing anyway, but I dunno if the xmen one counts.

Read my stories!

Sure, they count.

I got two main teams one of Elemental Powers and ones based on the Seven Heavenly Virtues

edited 18th Mar '11 6:57:05 AM by RandomChaos

With the power of a dragon I can make up for my inability to spill.

@SKJAM Gotta love those Coat, Hat, Mask guys. Also have to commend you on thinking up an interesting power and weakness for him...most Coat Hat Masks seem to have no powers.

Reinforcing that stereotype, I present The Listener: An Englishman who captured criminals and exposed corruption through a series of elaborate sting operations during the '60s and '70s. He can throw a punch and fire a gun, even if he wouldn't describe himself as a fighter. In fact he wouldn't describe himself at all, as he uses disguises whenever possible and trusts no one. Those traits can be frustrating to his fellow crimefighters, especially since he doesn't like the idea of working as a team. He's also adamant in his political views, views that cause him to sometimes be selective in what he exposes and create friction between his staunchly anti-communist allies at the height of the Cold War.

I've got two guns pointed west and a broken compass.

Picking up from the "trusts no one" bit...

In the early Sixties, an employee at a Chicago slaughterhouse was exposed to tissue from a cow that had been tampered with by aliens. As in the cow exploded when he cut its throat. He ingested some of its flesh and blood, and developed Super-Strength and Made of Iron. Naturally, he took to fighting crime on the South Side of Chicago as Slaughterhouse Jack.

Jack wasn't too bright, but he was savvy enough to act even more stupid than he actually was to catch opponents off guard. And then he found Brian. Brian was a smart but easily bullied boy who wound up helping Slaughterhouse Jack solve the clues to a tough case. Jack nicknamed him "Brain Boy" and let the kid hang around him.

Until a stray bullet nearly killed Brian, and Jack donated some blood to the boy. Yes, it was a Superhuman Transfusion. Brian didn't get any stronger or tougher, but his intellect shot through the roof. He became Brain Boy in truth, using his superhuman intelligence to solve mysteries and help out his team of sidekicks.

However, shortly after Brian's seventeenth birthday, Slaughterhouse Jack overexerted himself during a disaster when a train crashed off the Loop and he managed to catch it. His mighty heart had an attack, and doctors were unable to penetrate his hide in time to save him. Within weeks, Brain Boy's powers faded.

Brian struggled along at merely very bright for a while, but he just couldn't keep up with the other heroes any more, so he disappeared from their ranks, taking up a normal life, going to college, getting married and settling down.

It was more than a decade later that an old enemy of the Sidekicks tracked Brian down and subjected him to Electric Torture as part of a long-planned revenge. To his and Brian's surprise, this caused Brian's super-intellect to come back at full force. Brian reluctantly joined forces with his former teammates to stop the villain.

Now code-named Calculus, Brian is a Chessmaster who uses his superbrain to arrange affairs such that criminals are caught without ever seeing his face, let alone have a chance to fight back.

Brain Boy is awesome!

I'd like to mention two of my superheroes in Will Power (here's the explanation of who he is), El Jaguar and Dr Maximoth.

El Jaguar His real name is Alvaro Tehuantl. He can turn into a were-jaguar, which gives him claws, great strength and speed, and the ability to jump high.

Born in Nicaragua, Alvaro lives mostly in the United States now, although he sends money back to his family. He is a mixed-race Spanish/Indigenous Mesoamerican. Trained as an archaeologist and a geologist, he discovered an ancient Mesoamerican ruin in Southern Mexico. Entering it, he was greeted by a ghost-ancestor of his (who I don't have a name for yet), who explains that Alvaro is the last surviving member of a secret cult of Aztecs that turned into were-jaguars to combat evil.

Alvaro: Aren’t were-jaguars more Olmec than Aztec?

Ghost: Look, do you want to combat evil or what?

The ghost gives him a moon rock that transforms him into El Jaguar for the first time. Originally he could only trigger his were-jaguar form by being in moonlight; he solved this problem by videotaping the moon and playing it back on his mp3 player.

He works as a geologist on archaeological digs, which allows him to travel all over the world. Has a brother who sells porcelain. Catchphrase: “¡Yo Soy El Jaguar!”, meaning "I am the Jaguar!" (I'm sorry to any actual Nicaraguans or Spanish-speaking people if I got that horribly wrong.)

Dr Maximoth Atticus Atlas. A Doc Savage/the Phantom/Tarzan type hero, operates out of Hyperborea, a jungle in the middle of Antarctica. One of the older superheroes. White, but really muscular and bronzed.

He is basically a giant moth-man (super-strong, flight, sensitive feelers). He got this power because he was raised by moths.

Will: Raised by moths.

Dr Maximoth: Yes!

Dean: You weren’t...like, bitten by a radioactive or a genetically engineered moth or something?

Dr Maximoth: No. Raised by moths!

Will: O...kay.

Well since I'm back and have some time, I'll just go ahead and throw out my new comic idea.

A year ago, every meta-human and extra-normal containment facility had burst wide open at around the same moment, loosing a tide of supervillains, monsters, and other threats on the world. After an entire year's worth of concerted alliances and campaigns by the world's superheroes, mystic defenders, and paranormal agencies to stop the flood of destruction. But despite the efforts of countless superhumans, many villains still remained underground, and the identity of the mastermind behind the plot had still not been discovered.

The Invisible College - the secret society of influential figures in the various superhuman communities - came upon the conclusion that a large-scale investigation would only drive the plotter and the rats even deeper, that only a small secretive force would be ideal for this task. Two veteran superheroes, Byron Blake and Doc Danger, volunteered for the task.

Discussing even further between them, the two men decided that the best way to do things was to have a "cloak" and a "dagger", the "cloak" being a team of well-known heroes whose task was to be in the media spotlight and flush targets out of their hiding places, whereupon the "dagger" team (being composed of the lesser-known and the secretive) would ambush and disable them before fading into the night for the cloak team to take the glory.

But the mastermind's still out there, watching. He notices that something's going on. And he's taking steps to counteract this new threat. Soon, the Vanguard (said two teams) is rife with compromise, cover-ups, and falsehood.

Can the Light and Shadow teams of the Vanguard work together despite secrets, distrust, threats at every corner, and the threat of a new wave of super-crime to break out at any moment?

---

So anyway, characters. Let's start with our two leaders.

Byron Blake is a rather...weird character. Imagine Batman crossed with Spades Slick crossed with Two-Face crossed with Dr. Strange. As the mob boss and de-facto king of the magical and crime-ridden hidden city of Sanctum, Byron is a ruthless, vicious, sorcerer of great intelligence, cunning, and ambition. His status as a superhero is a strange one as well: the one time he left Sanctum to pursue one of his cronies that had transgressed his laws, Byron was hailed as a hero and given the name Blackwing. Seeing opportunity in his fame, Byron created a heroic persona complete with costume and cape, and actually left his city to be a superhero and take advantage of the situation. But each time he donned the mask, he found a growing hunger to do actually do altruistic deeds, directly conflicting his desire to rule with ruthlessness.

As the leader of the Light Team, Byron was one of the first to compromise his heroic ideals (as they were never there at the time), but as time went on the decisions became harder. Byron will receive the most change in the story, from a vicious mob boss to a reluctant hero to a humbled man.

Doc Danger is a very old hero, with old sensibilities and old values. Daniel Danjerwyzeski has fought everything from from vampires to the Nazi Thule Society to alien invaders. His intelligence, amazing physical capabilities, unwavering conviction, and experience in decades of superheroics has made him one of the most effective and respected members of the community, for food reason.

And that's all I got. I have no idea how to make him interesting.

---

So yeah. This is how I think Cry For Justice should have gone, amongst other comics storylines.

edited 2nd Apr '11 11:33:32 PM by Kraken

I love it, Kraken. The idea of a supervillain invasion*

is awesome and has always appealed to me.

Byron Blake sounds interesting. Do his superhero antics interfere with his rule over Sanctum? Would there be resistance to his rule if word got out that he was moonlighting as a good guy?

I've got two guns pointed west and a broken compass.

Of course. In fact, near the end they manage to overthrow him and strip him of much of his power, right before something really bad happens.

I'm having a lot of trouble with Doc Danger, really. A drug addiction would be a little too obvious, and seeing one's friends pass away while one stays alive doesn't seem to fit, somehow.

edited 2nd Apr '11 11:32:55 PM by Kraken

If he's fought everything and seen it all, maybe he could start to feel like he's just going through the motions in his heroics—sure, he's helping people, but he doesn't feel like he's really doing anything or made very much progress in his time. That's what I'd go with, at least.

I've got two guns pointed west and a broken compass.

That's good. The crisis at hand might cause him to think that this is the thing that gets him his "spark" back. He might push too hard and go too fast, too soon, and that might cost him.

Thanks.

Sure thing.

I've got two guns pointed west and a broken compass.