Episode 220 of the Letters Page: Writers’ Room: Southwest Sentinels #34

The Southwest sentinels for seem to have a snake theme of villains

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Time for a nice podcast in these GenCon times.

Ah yes, Quetzalcoatl, the ancient Aztec god of snakes, feathers and stuff, an important role to fill in any pantheon.

Hey now, who’s this Major Wreckage guy? He must be a minor villain, we’ve never heard of him before!

Love how into the aesthetics of the scene they are.

Even when tele-blorping, Writhe is the creepiest. Or perhaps because of it.

“The portal doubles in size.” This is what we in the business call ‘a big oopsie’.

I want know about their Mindfreak villain. c.c Someone vote for that.

Noooo, leave Gumbo alone! D: He is the best boy.

Oh, I am SO glad someone asked about the new character in the Rook City rulebook! And I love their answers. XD Can’t wait for the podcast miners to figure out who it might be! My money’s on someone from one of the supporting cast or “villains of” episodes.

It really is cool that this issue lines up with that incap art we already knew. :slight_smile:

A man that is both a hero and a villain, has a way of withstanding stuff to him in the Realm of Discord, and that we already know/they have talked about in the podcast, but this isn’t his standard look…?

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You know, I’ve been saying now and then in various spots that I really want Robert Johnson to show up somewhere in RCR, so now I’m wondering if our mysterious genderbent Carmen Sandiego expy is in fact Johnson in some funkier getup.

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That is a really cool idea! I just reread through the summary on that story, and I can’t believe I forgot how much I loved it.

I think the biggest problems I may have with that theory though are that 1) he doesn’t have a guitar, and 2) he died within the last 100 years. I don’t know when it becomes acceptable to add a real life person as a character in your comic book card game, but that seems a bit unlikely to me.

They’ve already integrated Robert Johnson into the comics with the creative process episode. As to whether they are the character shown in the rulebook or not I don’t know.

Oh, definitely! But there’s a difference between showing up in the podcast and being depicted in the card game. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, I’m just thinking that might affect their thought process in including him in the game.

It’s a really cool concept for a character, but also a real person.

Normally I’d agree, but in this case Johnson already is something of a myth/legend IRL, tbh. (In that he already has the “sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads to learn the blues” myth attached to him; it’s not something C&A made up themselves.)

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Okay, this has made me want to try and pull together the full Southwest Sentinels timeline as it probably exists.

Phase I: The Southwest Sentinels

Issue 1: March 2011: Doctor Medico and Mainstay find the Idealist and fight La Capitan.
Issue 2: April 2011: There’s some controversy here; originally this is where Night Snake first appeared, but later podcasts say that this is when Writhe made his first appearance.
Issue 3: May 2011: This is either Writhe’s first appearance, or the issue in which La Capitan returns and Writhe joins the Sentinels to fight her.
Issue 4: June 2011: If Writhe first appeared in Issue 3, this is where he joins up.

Now we have a bit of a vague section. We know that there are at least nine more issues, and probably quite a few more. During this time, we get:

  • A Halloween episode in Issue #8, October 2011, and probably another one for Issue #20, October 2012 (the Southwest Sentinels did a Halloween story every year.) These might have been one of the below stories.
  • A battle against the Crackerjack Crew, probably Issue #13, March 2012 (as part of the Vengeance Revisited event.) This was originally part of the first Vengeance event, but that happened before the Sentinels existed. This is when the Sentinels first spent time interacting with the rest of the Sentinels universe (other than La Capitan.)
  • The first appearance of Quetzacoatl
  • At least one story involving Wager Master, probably later than #13
  • At least one story involving FILTER, also probably later than #13, which was primarily about Writhe’s inner struggles.
  • A story involving fighting and beating Set, and sending him to the Block. This could be the same as the Writhe story above.
  • A story involving Highbrow and the Adhesivist, which was originally part of Vengeance, but Vengeance Revisited was shorter so probably isn’t any more.
  • A story involving Miss Information messing with the team
  • A story involving The Contract getting thrown into Writhe

Phase II: The Adamant Sentinels

At some point, sales start to flag and the Sentinels get fully integrated into the universe as part of Fort Adamant. We know this happens before Issue #28, but probably not a long time before that, because Judge Mental appears in this arc and there was discussion about whether he was around in early 2013. I don’t think we have First Appearance numbers for the Adamant Sentinels yet, though.

Adamant Sentinels stories that we don’t have numbers for involve fights against Re-Volt, Highbrow, Radioactivist, Char, and the Operative. We don’t know if they appear in five different issues, or if some of them are repeats. We also know that there are solo issues dealing with Judge Mental and Miss Information.

Our first story that definitely involves the Adamant Sentinels is Southwest Sentinels #28, June 2013 when they take part in the first Chokepoint event, Cosmic Concurrence. They go on a few more missions for Fort Adamant, presumably including another Halloween special in Issue #32, until the two-parter in #33 and #34, November and December 2013 which is the Quetzacoatl two-parter. Then there’s an aftermath story in #35, and finally in February 2014 they run into Chokepoint again as part of Termi-Nation and are vanished for over a year.

Phase III: Void Guard

The Void Guard first appear in Cosmic Tales in February 2015, and then make their proper debut in Deepest Space #1, in March 2015. There are a total of six volumes of Deepest Space, but the Void Guard aren’t in all of them.
Deepest Space #1 (March 2015), the Void Guard are caught by the Bloodsworn Coliseum
Deepest Space #3 (May 2015), Lifeline arrives at the Coliseum and gets in a fight with the Void Guard.
Deepest Space #4-6 (June-August 2015), Lifeline and the Void Guard beat up Kaagra and escape to Earth.

The Void Guard also show up in Cosmic Contest, May 2015.

Simultaneously with Deepest Space, the new Void Guard series launches in May 2015. It probably runs for 10-12 issues, leading up to Oblivaeon. In Void Guard, the team has adventures involving the Celestial Tribunal, Chokepoint (possibly the same adventure), Wager Master again, the Enclave of the Endlings, and the Thorathian Civil War. This culminates in them returning in May 2016 to take part in the Skinwalker Gloomweaver two-parter, which breaks the team a bit; Medico goes dark, Writhe goes dark, Mainstay goes lonely, and Idealist is too much of a teen to pull them back together. It’s implied that there are no Void Guard-specific stories in that time, although they appear in other leadups to Oblivaeon.

Shortly after that, Oblivaeon occurs, and then we’re into the post-Oblivaeon era of Void Guard, about which we know very little aside from Greazer is in it.

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@FrivYeti
there were also stories with Miss Information punking the Sentinels and The Contract coming to the Southwest and being fed to Voidsoul before Adamant time.

anyone feel like this missed the prompt?
A minor villain did not get a major victory. a one-off freak of the week was upgraded to major villain status

I don’t think “freak of the week” is quite accurate, but now that you mention it, it does seem more like “character presumed dead makes his second appearance and actually succeeds this time!” Especially because this is a character that is 2 (?) years old now. (Not that I believe they are 2, but they have been in comics for 2 years)

Thank you, I’d missed those. Added in.

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It did not “involve” Voidsoul but the contract turned himself into a dead man switch bomb so Mainstay through him into Writhe to get rid of him.
And now we know thing that go into Writhe went to Voidsoul.

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