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Squadron Supreme
The Squadron Supreme of Earth-31916 are a Darker and Edgier counterpart to the original Squadron Supreme from Earth-712. Hyperion
- Adaptational Jerkass: He is considerably less friendly than the Earth-712 Hyperion, especially after realizing he had been a tool of the government all along.
- Alliterative Name: Hyperion's civilian name is "Mark Milton", although it was chosen as part of a PR stunt, and the government agent who named him that personally thinks it's a really stupid name.
- Beware the Superman: Hyperion isn't evil, but he comes to believe that his true destiny is to rule the world "for its own good", as that his powers make him better than humans. This trait goes hand-in-hand with his increasing sense of alienation and betrayal from the human race.
- Captain Patriotic: This is what the US government attempts to make him into from childhood. It doesn't work.
- Clark Kenting: Invoked and Subverted; Hyperion wanted to try and create a "civilian identity" for himself so he could try living amongst humanity after first coming out as a super-hero, but his government handlers shot the idea down.
- Corrupted Character Copy: He's Superman... if Supes was reared by Cold War-era government agents as a living weapon and eventually went off the reservation.
- First Injury Reaction: Hyperion feels pain for the first time while fighting Doc Spectrum. Hyperion, whose senses and biology render him immune or unable to be stimulated by almost anything on Earth, appears thrilled by this and immediately demands that Spectrum do it again. Spectrum is understandably weirded out by this and promptly runs away from the fight.
- Madden Into Misanthropy: Originally, Hyperion is shown as a fairly sweet and sincerely nice guy, albeit with some hints of a darker side, but finding out his entire life was a lie and being continually exposed to humanity's flaws eventually sends him over the edge.
- Not So Invincible After All: Whilst Hyperion is incredibly durable, he can be hurt and even killed. In particular, when caught in a trap made up of 20 "daisy-cutter" bombs, he barely survives, and would have died from his injuries if Zarda hadn't saved him.
- Super Power Lottery: As befits a Superman Substitute, Hyperion has a bevvy of powers; he's a Nigh-Invulnerable Flying Brick with Super-Speed, Super-Senses, and Eye Beams.
- Superman Substitute: He's even more blatantly a Superman stand-in than his Earth-712 counterpart, taken in the direction of a Corrupted Character Copy.
- Tyke Bomb: Hyperion and Zarda were part of an alien vanguard fleet, with each "invasion probe" consisting of an automated ship guided by a sapient power source/A.I. hybrid, with each ship carrying two super-powered alien babies in artificial life support chambers—one male and one female—as well as a cargo of mutagenic bio-agents. Their ship was attacked in transit and all but destroyed; the two pods were launched to their destination, but arrived at separate points in Earth's history.
Doctor Spectrum
- Abusive Parents: His mother was a verbally abusive ex-prostitute who was so desperate for a "normal" life that she married a brutish thug named Eddie, who physically abused his step-son. Eddie ended up killing her, and Joseph promptly killed him.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: He is blond when Joe Ledger had black hair on Earth-712.
- An Arm and a Leg: In the 2011 miniseries, he cuts off his own hand in an attempt to escape the Power Prism's hold over him, but later makes the sacrifice of having it embedded in his chest to take out Hyperion.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: He spent his comatose years mentally duking it out with the Power Prism for the right to survive, which is covered in the 6-issue "Doctor Spectrum" mini-series.
- Corrupted Character Copy: He's basically Green Lantern, but was a black ops agent with slightly dubious mental stability before being bonded to the Power Prism. Also, the source of his powers is actually capable of controlling him, rather than the other way around.
- Imagination-Based Superpower: He has the power to create iridescent energy fields that can be used to grant himself flight, forcefields and energy blasts.
- Interspecies Romance: He has an attraction to Amphibian, who is an aquatic mutant.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While he was somewhat callous toward Nighthawk, Hyperion, and Blur while he took Redstone off their hands and had no intention of ever letting him face justice for his crimes, he correctly points out that any civilian authority they could hand him over to would be incapable of adequately holding him before trial, and they have no means of keeping Redstone contained aside from just murdering him, while the military does have specialized facilities for imprisoning him. Blur and Hyperion begrudgingly admit he might be right.
- Loyal Phlebotinum: The Power Prism, two-fold.
- Anyone attempting to interfere with the Prism once it's attached to him will be vaporized by its self-defense program.
- The Power Prism's in-built A.I. is actually loyal to Hyperion, and will do whatever it takes to protect, guard and support him, including taking control over Joseph's body to do so.
- My Greatest Failure: He's shown to be haunted by memories of killing a kid during a covert ops in South America.
- Self-Made Orphan: Killed his step-father.
- Sociopathic Soldier: Played With. He was regarded as the "perfect soldier", because he was perceived as a natural killer who would follow any order, no matter how monstrous, and carry it out with the greatest skill and precision. However, for all that he's capable of being ruthless, he's one of the more compassionate members of the Squadron andis haunted by killing a kid on a covert op in South America.
Blur
- Adaptation Name Change: His codename is Blur instead of the Whizzer.
- Broken Pedestal:
- He very quickly loses any and all respect for Nighthawk after the later's fanatical black supremacism is shown to translate into racism against other Afro-Americans who don't measure up to his standards.
- He slowly becomes disillusioned with the Squadron as he comes to realize what assholes they all are.
- Captain Ersatz: He's basically The Flash, but as an African-American.
- Composite Character: Like Stanley Stewart of Earth-712, he is a super-speedster and a member of the Squadron Supreme. Like Jeffrey Walters of Earth-148611, he is an African-American superhero with speed powers calling himself "The Blur" and gained his powers from an extraterrestrial/cosmic source.
- Morality Pet: He's Hyperion's only real human friend, and even in the Bad Future, Hyperion's trying to talk him around to join him rather than just eliminate him.
- Nice Guy: He is absolutely, 100%, the single most decent, affable and genuinely heroic member of the Squadron.
- Race Lift: The Stanley Stewart of Earth-712 is white; the one from Earth-31916 is black.
- Super-Speed: His only super power.
Zarda
- Bad Boss: When she decides it's time to finally join Hyperion, she drains the life from one of her male cultists to restore herself from a withered near-corpse to almost full beauty. As her victim's mother is chanting her praise and ranting about how she has come to bring about the prophesied rebirth of their cult, she notices that one of her hairs is gray, and she promptly drains the woman to death as well in order to fix it.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Her origin story to Hyperion implies that humanity's stories of super-powerful heroes and monsters may actually stem from the original crop of mutates caused by the arrival of her pod.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Zarda is beautiful and can feign docility when it suits her, but the truth is she's a monster who regards human life as worth less than nothing. Whereas Hyperion wants to conquer Earth to make the world a better place, she wants to conquer Earth because, as she sees it, that's the only right and proper way for the world to be.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Presumably due to centuries spent hiding in isolation, Zarda's mental state is clearly scrambled.
- Composite Character: She gets her name, hero alias, general powers, and Squadron Supreme membership from the original Zarda, but many of her personality traits, more ancient origins, much greater levels, and history as a figure worshipped in Greek myth makes her very much like Marvel's Hippolyta.
- Corrupted Character Copy: She's a darker take on Wonder Woman who regards all life aside from herself as toys, and who believes she is an actual Greek goddess rather than merely worshipping them. Her conqueror personality, alien origins, desire to make Hyperion her mate, and having similar powers to Hyperion draws parallels to Superman's on/off friend/foe, Maxima.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Zarda does behave like the Gods of the Greek mythology did: which means she's a self-centered, selfish power-mad woman who believes in Might Makes Right.
- Fan Disservice: The first time we see her, she a thousand-year old, desiccated, completely naked shambling corpse.
- A God Am I: Unlike Hyperion, Zarda genuinely believes she is a living goddess, and she even describes their mutual origins in a Science Fantasy way as "gods from another planet". It's unclear how much of this is due to arriving on Earth during the time of classical mythology, and how much is due to going mad from isolation over the centuries.
- Lady Land: It's implied by the ranting of her last cultist that when Zarda openly ruled over humanity, women were placed higher than men, and said cultist hoped to see the world returned to this paradise. Unfortunately for her, Zarda doesn't really care for gender so much as she views all humans as inferior to her.
- Ms. Fanservice: Once Zarda gets her youth back (implied to be by sucking it out of a man she's just killed), she spends the tenth issue, all of the next one, and most of the one after that stark naked.
- Royal "We": Zarda tends to refer to herself as "We" instead of "I", seemingly due to her past a god-queen in the Roman era.
- Super Power Lottery: She's a Flying Brick with added Life Drinker powers, which she can use to both rejuvenate herself (both to restore injuries and to undo the effects of aging) and which she can use to revitalize others.
- Super Supremacist: Humans are barely insects in Zarda's eyes, and she will kill a human without even thinking about it.
- Take That!: In-Universe, although she is given the official "heroine name" of Princess Power, she thinks it's a stupid name.
- Tyke Bomb: Hyperion and Zarda were part of an alien vanguard fleet, with each "invasion probe" consisting of an automated ship guided by a sapient power source/AI hybrid, with each ship carrying two super-powered alien babies in artificial life support chambers—one male and one female—as well as a cargo of mutagenic bio-agents. Their ship was attacked in transit and all but destroyed; the two pods were launched to their destination, but arrived at separate points in Earth's history.
- Wonder Woman Wannabe: Like her Earth-712 counterpart, she is an ersatz of Wonder Woman, but taken to a Corrupted Character Copy direction.
Amphibian
- Absurdly Sharp Claws: During a brief fight against Zarda, Amphibian is able to scratch Zarda's face and draw blood. This is despite the fact that, as an even older member of Hyperion's species, her skin is almost impenetrable.
- Adaptational Skimpiness: The male Amphibian of Earth-712 wore clothes, while this female incarnation goes completely nude prior to reluctantly donning a costume in the 2006 Squadron Supreme series, and even then her costume is way more revealing than what the original Kingsley Rice typically wore.
- Corrupted Character Copy: To Aquaman. Whereas Arthur Curry is a male Apparently Human Merfolk who hails from Atlantis, Amphibian is a visibly mutated fish-girl who is a one-of-a-kind freak created by alien bio-modding viruses. Not helped by the fact that her years of being alone has turned her near-feral and unable to communicate with people.
- Cute Monster Girl: Amphibian has the appearance of a beautiful woman with twin-shaded blue skinnote , a long, delicate-looking golden fin on each calf and forearm, black markings over her eyes, webbed fingers & toes, black & gold "eyespot" markings on her shoulders and the sides of her head, and a mohawk-like crest of flexible golden spikes on her head.
- Cute Mute: She never speaks, instead communicating through telepathy. The readers don't even get to see her thought bubbles, instead seeing Doctor Spectrum (and later others, like Arcanna) reacting to her "silent questions".
- Fan Disservice: Depending on your feelings about blue-skinned Fish People, Amphibian being naked all the time can be seen as off-putting.
- Gender Flip: The Amphibian of Earth-712 is male, whereas this Amphibian here is female.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: She's naked the majority of the time and doesn't seem to have any issues with people seeing her nudity, primarily due to her upbringing preventing her from comprehending the concept of clothing.
- Interspecies Romance: She's an aquatic mutant who has something going on with the human Doctor Spectrum.
- Nice Girl: She's very sweet, by and large.
- Super Power Lottery: She has Super-Speed (but only when swimming), Super-Strength, the ability to survive underwater indefinitely, the ability to survive on land for at least a time, telepathic communication, and the ability to perceive the auras of aliens.
- Super-Senses: She can see a unique aura around aliens like Zarda or the Power Prism when it's taken over Doctor Spectrum.
- Wild Child: Amphibian had no human contact for most of her life, and her social skills are appropriately appalling.
Emil Burbank
- Adaptational Hairstyle Change: This version of Emil Burbank is clean-shaven and has shorter hair, when the original Emil Burbank was bearded and shaggy because he resented Hyperion for accidentally making him very hairy (in contrast to Silver Age Lex Luthor being mad at Superman for accidentally making him go bald).
- Adaptational Villainy: He's a lot worse than his Earth-712 counterpart, whose vendetta was solely directed at Hyperion for slighting him, was willing to side with his nemesis in the face of greater crises and never preyed on underage girls.
- Berserk Button: He insists that his genius is "natural" and not a result of the mutagenic virus released by Hyperion's ship.
- Brother–Sister Incest: It's heavily implied that he did sexual things to his older sister as a boy.
- Corrupted Character Copy: Take Lex Luthor, give him hair, make him somehow even more insufferable, and sandblast any and all slightly likable traits off of him, and you get Burbank. Oh, and make him a serial sexual predator.
- Enfant Terrible: As a prepubescent boy, he murdered anybody who bullied him and repeatedly raped his sister so often that the fragmented memories of what he did left her in a mental asylum.
- Geniuses Have Multiple PhDs: What better way to illustrate that Burbank is a Omnidisciplinary Scientist/Renaissance Man? He has no less than six doctorate degrees–in biology, chemistry, metallurgy, psychology, economics, and literature. How he did the coursework to achieve that is anyone's guess, or maybe his dissertation was so brilliant and all-encompassing that a few departments awarded him PhDs simultaneously.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: After spending multiple series weaseling out of any punishment due to coasting on his intelligence being required to fight back against greater threats, Howard Chaykin's series ends with Burbank losing his advanced intellect due to being among the many super-powered beings affected by the sudden loss of their powers, striking a blow to his inflated ego and ensuring his last appearance in the series has him suffer under being hit where it hurts him the most.
- Laser-Guided Karma: At the climax of Squadron Supreme Return, his attempts to destroy Hyperion instead create a "reaction wave" that permanently depowers all people empowered by the "Hyperion virus"... including himself.
- Sadist: Emil revels in exploiting his intellect to inflict suffering and misery on the world around him.
- Self-Made Orphan: Sabotaged his parents' car to kill them so he could benefit from life-insurance policies... which he had forged.
- Sixth Ranger Traitor: After the government learns that Emil has already begun working on countermeasures to take down his teammates during his first outing with them, they recruit him as their "ace in the hole" against the Squadron going rogue. In Squadron Supreme Return, he actively goes renegade, creating his own superhuman team to try and take down the Squadron.
- Super-Intelligence: Emil's one and only power; he is a genius of unparalleled intellect.
- Take Over the World: Discussed and averted. Unlike Lex Luthor, Burbank has no desire to take over the world because he gets along just fine with the world the way it is. He makes a modest but comfortable living as a teacher, which allows him to indulge in his two favorite pastimes: talking down to others and sexually assaulting little girls.
Inertia
- Abusive Parents: Her father was a misogynistic self-righteous scumbag who literally declared it was her own fault when she as raped.
- Adaptational Sexuality: She's a lesbian when her Earth-712 counterpart was in a relationship with the male Haywire.
- Adaptational Villainy: Her counterpart from Earth-712 is a genuinely heroic and pleasant individual.
- Butch Lesbian: She's a lesbian, and also a muscular, short-haired woman with a very aggressive temperament.
- Composite Character: She has the sex, some of the powers, the name, and super-alias of the original Inertia, but her Race Lift combined with her physical superpowers make her similar to the original version of Michael Redstone.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Again; father abused her mom and ultimately murdered her to protect his reputation, and she was pack-raped by three boys in high school.
- Does Not Like Men: Somewhat understandably given her Dark and Troubled Past, Edith has a deep disdain for the male gender. She is very aggressive and hostile towards men, often acting in an almost misandric way, and can't abide to be touched by them. There's even an implication that her homosexuality is at least partially due to her trauma. Though, she doesn't display any overt animosity towards Blur.
- Energy Absorption: Inertia's mutant abilities allow her to absorb and redirect kinetic energy, although she doesn't use this power much in comparison to her Super-Strength and Super-Toughness.
- Hypocrite: When shown flirting with a girl in Supreme Power: Hyperion #1, she basically acts exactly like the sort of crude, macho-driven self-absorbed asshole that she hates men for acting like.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: In addition to murdering her father and the boys who raped her, during "Operation Long Walk", the Squadron's deployment to the Middle East, she encountered a young girl whose mother and sisters had been stoned to death by her father and three of her other male relatives for the "sin" of being raped by invading soldiers. She promptly sought out those four men, buried them all up to their necks in the earth, and gave the girl a length of torn-off metal fence, walking away as the girl promptly beat them all to death whilst they were helpless.
- Rape as Backstory: Inertia's backstory hinges on her being gang raped as a teenager.
- Super-Strength: She has enormous strength, and can tear through stone or metal as if it were paper.
- Super-Toughness: She's tough enough to shrug off being shot with assault rifles as if they were throwing spitballs.
Arcanna
- Adaptational Villainy: Her Earth-712 counterpart is a Hot Witch who uses actual magic and is genuinely heroic. Arcanna of Earth-31916 is a mutate who manipulates quantum parallel universes to change reality as she desires.
- Corrupted Character Copy: She's a Captain Ersatz of Zatanna, but far more willing to use her powers for personal gain.
- Magic by Any Other Name: Played with. Although her powers are scientific in nature (for a sufficiently lax definition of "scientific"), they are compared to magic by several characters, and she is her universe's equivalent of Zatanna, Mistress of Magic.
- Nice Girl: Relatively. She's kind enough to Shape, and generally one of the more pleasant Squadron members.
- Quantum Mechanics Can Do Anything: The explanation for her powers.
- Reality Warper: Her basic power; she can perceive alternate realities and "quantum possibilities", and shift them to do whatever she wants.
The Shape
- Adaptational Hairstyle Change: Subverted. He has a full head of hair in his earlier appearances, but by the 2006 Squadron Supreme series is bald like his Earth-712 counterpart.
- Adaptational Modesty: He dresses considerably more conservatively than his Earth-712 counterpart, whose only clothing was a pair of shorts.
- Appropriated Appellation: He calls himself "Shape" because that's what kids used to call him for years when picking on him.
- Big Fun: Shape is basically a big, friendly, dim-witted kid in the form of a massively corpulent man.
- Composite Character: From the Shape of Earth-712, he gets his real name, hero alias, Squadron Supreme membership, and he is the human shapeshifter member of the team. As the super-strong, super-tough, morbidly obese Dumb Muscle of his team, he takes a lot of traits of Blob from the X-Men. As a mentally-handicapped shapeshifter who grew up homeless and primarily operates by taking orders from his far more intelligent companions/teammates, he has a resemblance to the Morlock known as Ape.
- Dumb Is Good: He's fairly gentle by inclination, and at a direct contrast to Burbank, who is a) brilliant, b) a colossal asshole, to put it mildly.
- Dumb Muscle: Shape's intellect is child-like at best.
- Kids Are Cruel: As he grew up, Shape was repeatedly bullied by other children, who did everything from call him names and throw things at him to set him on fire.
- Manchild: For all intents and purposes, he's just a childlike man who is easily placated and manipulated.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: Nothing hurts the Shape. Nothing. He has literally shrugged off being punched by an angry Hyperion.
- Rubber Man: There are hints that his body has a rubber-like consistency, allowing the Shape the ability to stretch and warp himself as he needs, but he's too dimwitted to really exploit the potential of this beyond harmlessly absorbing physical blows or smothering foes in the folds of his belly.
- Super-Strength: The Shape is so strong he can actually pose a major challenge even to Hyperion.
Nuke
- Action Bomb: Can generate what is basically an atomic explosion from his body, although this leaves him temporarily drained.
- Composite Character: He is mostly similar to the original Nuke of the Squadron Supreme, but some of his altered powerset and personal history is similar to the Radioactive Man, his body naturally has a green radioactive glow, without wearing his radiation-moderating suit he can quickly cause radiation sickness/poisoning to those around himself, and he has low-level super-strength, and he serves his country's government as a superhuman agent.
- Corrupted Character Copy: He’s clearly Captain Atom if he couldn’t control the levels of radiation coming from his body.
- Flying Firepower: Nuke can fly and shoot radioactive energy beams.
- Poisonous Person: Radiation rather than poison, but yes; without his special containment suit, Nuke will fatally contaminate anyone around him.
- Power Incontinence: He can't shut his radiation generation off, making him a hazard to everyone around him.
- Super-Strength: He can lift in excess of 1000 pounds, with his upper limit being unknown.
- Walking Wasteland: Again, he's a living unshielded nuclear reactor.
Tom Thumb
- Ass Shove: He was placed in an air-filled capsule and inserted into the Shape's rectum as a "concealed deployment" in the Squadron Supreme's first mission. This achieved absolutely nothing except traumatizing Tom Thumb so badly he skipped the next mission to undergo psychological counseling.
- Butt-Monkey: He's basically a comedic punching bag for the comics, between his useless power and the aforementioned Ass Shove incident.
- Corrupted Character Copy: Unlike The Atom, he's got no Sizeshifter powers, he's just permanently small, and unlike his Earth-712 counterpart, he doesn't have any increased intelligence to make up for his physical limitations.
- The Napoleon: He's small, and seems to be an incredible Jerkass to compensate. Being extremely combative with everyone and threatening to kick peoples' asses if they're mocking him.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: He's permanently shrunken down to less than an inch tall. As a result, he gets no respect from anyone, who all view him as useless.
Other Superhumans
Nighthawk
- Adaptational Jerkass: Given that he has a chip on his shoulder against all Caucasians due to believing them to all be guilty of racism and having no issue at all in killing criminals, it's safe to say he's a worse person than his Earth-712 counterpart.
- "Angry Black Man" Stereotype: He's a racially motivated revenge-seeking black supremacist vigilante.
- Badass Normal: No superpowers, possibly, but he's still an incredibly competent crimefighter and vigilante.
- Boomerang Bigot: In addition to the whole "racist against white people" thing, Nighthawk is so caught up in his black supremacy thing that he actively denounces any black American who isn't opposed to white Americans as being a white supremacy collaborator. He alienates the Blur in this manner twice, the second time actively calling him a "house negro".
- Bullying a Dragon:
- Repeatedly insulting Blur and Hyperion for not being "pro-black enough". The first time, Blur strips Nighthawk naked and tells him that he can walk home like thatnote . The second time, Blur hurls a paper forcefully into Nighthawk's wounded stomach.
- In the Squadron Supreme: Hyperion vs. Nighthawk miniseries, he uses a Kryptonite equivalent to force Hyperion into assisting him in stopping racial genocide in the African nation of Darfur.
- Captain Ethnic: Invoked; Nighthawk only cares about stopping crime against blacks, and literally ignores everything else.
- Corrupted Character Copy: He's a racially motivated black supremacist version of Batman.
- Death by Irony: Despite surviving the death of his entire universe during the Secret Wars (2015) storyline, Kyle gets killed when he attends a regime protest in plain-clothes during the events of Secret Empirenote , with his costume and superhero identity being taken up by Tilda Johnson, former minor Captain America villain who had recently become his sidekick.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite being the first costumed vigilante on his world, Nighthawk was deliberately passed over for the Squadron Supreme by the US Government since he didn't have any super powers. Granted, given that he hates the Squadron for the most part, he doesn't seem too bothered by it.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Whilst Blur mostly thinks that Nighthawk has his head up his ass when it comes to his "race war" beliefs, even noting that Africans seem perfectly willing to kill and butcher each other over arbitrary racial divides despite all being "blacks", he does concede in the 2006 run of Supreme Power that there are tensions between black and white Americans, and that white people have caused a lot of problems for black people.
- Everyone Has Standards: Black drug dealers and pimps are the only African-American criminals that even Nighthawk will go after.
- N-Word Privileges: Averted. Blur chews Nighthawk out for being more racially profiling than any of the white people he lived amongst down in Georgia, and physically assaults him when he walks in and hears Nighthawk describing him as a "House Negro".
- Politically Incorrect Hero: He means well in defending black people from racism and hate crimes, but is very prejudiced towards Caucasians due to seeing all of them as racists.
- The Power of Hate: Whether he is a superhuman or not, his innate hatred for everything racist essentially gives him Charles Atlas Superpowers.
- Race Lift: Kyle Richmond's counterparts on Earth-616 and Earth-712 are both white. The Avengers (Jason Aaron) introduced a black 616 version, though given the somewhat dubious origins of that Squadron, there's no telling where he comes from.
- Sherlock Scan: Much like his inspiration, Nighthawk is capable of analyzing his surroundings and the people around him to best plan around any situation. This is downplayed in that he often requires prep time and needs to build a proper loadout for his gear in order to have the tools to actually use this talent.
- The best example of this was how he was able to secure Hyperion's support in Darfur — knowing that Hyperion could be injured and was so unused to the feeling that a great enough pain could disable him, Nighthawk spent a year researching and securing blueprints to a weapon that could be deployed against him, seemingly maiming Hyperion badly enough to cow him. Hyperion was actually never injured in the first place (and Nighthawk in fact fractured his own fingers during the short fight), as the prototype weapon was psychic in nature and simply made Hyperion believe he was injured. He eventually figures it out, but goes along with Nighthawk's plan anyway.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Nighthawk hates having to work with Hyperion, mostly because it pisses him off that Hyperion is a white man who is physically superior to him. Hyperion doesn't really care about Nighthawk's opinion one way or the other. In return, Blur hates Nighthawk because he thinks Nighthawk has his head so far up his ass with his "black power!" schtick that he's become as bad as the white supremacists he battles against.
- With Us or Against Us: It's pretty much the core of his philosophy: In a world with masters and slaves - oppressors and oppressed - every slave that isn't looking for a way to defeat the masters serves the masters. He likens it to the divide between "House Negros and Field Negros", a simile he claims his dad passed onto him from Malcolm X. It's the main reason that the Blur can't stand him.
Redstone
A former soldier turned Serial Killer. His string of savage murders attracts the attention of Nighthawk, Hyperion, Blur, and the American government, making him the trio's first superpowered opponent.
- Achilles' Heel: Nigh-Invulnerability or no, Redstone still needs to breathe, which is how Blur takes him down and how Alexander keeps him in check.
- Adaptational Superpower Change: The original Redstone had Super-Strength derived from close proximity to the earth. Here, as a result of mutagenic experiments done by the military, Redstone has most of Hyperion's superpowers, barring flight.
- Adaptational Villainy: The Redstone of the original Squadron Supreme was a bit rough around the edges and boisterous, but certainly nothing like the murderous sadist found in Supreme Power.
- An Arm and a Leg: His MO involves ripping the arms clean off his victims.
- Because I'm Good At It: He claims that this is why he murders people to General Alexander. That, and because he genuinely likes it.
- Boxed Crook: After being convicted of the brutal murder of a fellow National Guardswoman, Redstone was offered the choice between the death penalty or becoming an experimental subject with the Hyperion virus. General Alexander offers him a similar choice: rot in his prison, die of poison gas, or serve the American government as a terrorist taking down "uncooperative" countries from the shadows. This backfires when a different government offers him a better deal and a chance to get revenge on Hyperion.
- He-Man Woman Hater: His macho attitude while working as a soldier and National Guardsman caused him to brutally murder his sergeant when she chewed him out for lagging on a run.
- Sadist: Redstone only finds pleasure in hurting other people and admits that he enjoys murder to General Alexander.
- Serial Killer: He murders sex workers as a pastime, claiming it's the only time he feels at peace. Fortunately for him, the American military decides to put his talents to use abroad.
Arachnophilia
- Corrupted Character Copy: She's a Gender Flipped teenage Spider-Man during his Steve Ditko days. She lacks the "spider-sense" and generates "webbing" organically, in the form of a yellow mucus she secretes from her skin.
- Held Back in School: When Tucker Ford's mother confronts her and Tucker on their relationship, she explains that she should be a high school senior but is presently retaking her junior year.
- Teens Are Monsters: Nell is selfish, cruel, self-absorbed and generally a bundle of spite and neuroses wrapped up in a teenage girl's skin. Her introduction in Supreme Power (2011) even characterizes her as the kind of girl everyone describes as "quiet and unimposing" after she takes a gun and goes on a rampage at her high school.
Old Soldier
- Artistic License – History: He is created from the remains in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but has memories of fighting in the American Revolution and the Gulf War, which is at odds with the fact that the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier only contains casualties from World War II as well as the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
- Captain Patriotic: He's described as literally the embodiment of the American fighting man, and is metaphysically made up from the collective essence of American soldiers from every war that America has ever fought.
- Composite Character: He combines elements of Ragman—a minor DC character who gained superpowers from wearing the haunted rags of Jews slain in the Nazi death camps—and Captain America.
Biogeneral
- Captain Ersatz: He's basically Iron Man in the quasi-DC world of Earth-31916.
The Crew of Icarus One
- Abusive Parents: Peter Boyer is the gay son of two extremely homophobic parents. His childhood was extremely unpleasant.
- Composite Character: Ted Munn is basically a combination of Ben Grimm and Swamp Thing.
- Dysfunction Junction: These four are even more dysfunctional than the original Fantastic Four.
- The Fantastic Faux: They resemble the Fantastic Four but with most of them having different powers; four astronauts imbued with superpowers on a space flight that went disastrously wrong, with the team consisting of 1 woman and 3 men, with one of the men gaining superpowers at the cost of being permanently disfigured.
- Planimal: Ted Munn was transformed into a humanoid plant by his mutation.
- Power Perversion Potential: Kathy Mora uses her Self-Duplication to continue an affair with Ted Munn.
Whiteface
A former pharmacist who became a serial killer who masquerades as a clown. Confronted by Nighthawk in the miniseries Supreme Power: Nighthawk.
- Practically Joker: Given that he's a deranged killer who dresses as a clown, takes a perverse pleasure in his crimes and is fought by Batman Parody Nighthawk, he is clearly a parallel to the Dark Knight's most famous foe the Joker. In an ironic twist, while the Joker is sometimes depicted as having a Glasgow Grin, Whiteface instead has scars that give him the appearance of constantly frowning.
- Sadist: The main reason he kills people is because he enjoys hearing their deaths reported on the news.
- Would Hurt a Child: He attempted to kill an African-American infant and also murdered everyone at a boy's sixth birthday party, children included.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: He fancies himself as Nighthawk's eternal nemesis, which blindsides him towards Nighthawk opting to just kill him and get it over with while he can.
