The Scavenger Unity episode
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For once in my life, I am not dreading a birthday, but I totally get what Adam’s talking about.
…Oh my god, Christopher doesn’t even get to hit his 40’s before his body just starts falling apart. D: I hope he can get something done about this!
If Scavenger Unity wasn’t in the Final Wasteland, I’d be really surprised!
Let them fight! 
This is a very cool insight into Unity’s powers.
I’ll bet Haka doesn’t dread birthdays.
Fungus ship? Fungus ship!
Actually, I think I brought up Mr. Hideous! XD
The fun thing about creating fake comic books is that you can say things like “this part is well-written and well-received” or “and then they fight and it’s awesome!” and not have to worry about messing up the delivery. XD Very smart!
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Given his age, I doubt he even knows his exact birthdate. Calendars and timekeeping in general were very different when and where he was a wee nipper. Can probably narrow it down to some phase of a given moon in a season but I’d be surprised if he can get much more precise unless some time traveler helped him out.
One wonders if the problem might be mitigated if she made Very Large Bot in a friendlier form. Not controlling a robot T-Rex is obviously going to be dangerous. Not controlling a robot maneki-neko or Care Bear the size of a T-Rex might work out better.
Must say I’m impressed by the verisimilitude of that robo-dino. Here it is at the end of the world, presumably no one around to critique her work and she still bothered to give it a tongue. And there aren’t any paleontologists left to complain about her leaving the plumage off. 
Octogator is a nice visual design, although I’m peeved it came out just now. Got an “octo-” villain most of the way done myself and now it’ll feel like I’m cribbing.
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Fun episode, and now I’m really curious about Unity and Guise Vs Ambuscade!
I have another thought about the whole “Sentinel Comics teams don’t change makeup very often” - Sentinel Comics doesn’t particularly like teams as an editorial staff.
The Freedom Five had their golden age incarnation, and then their Freedom Four incarnation, and then settled into their current incarnation in 1958, but for most of the history of Sentinel Comics they were the only superhero team around. The Prime Wardens didn’t form until 1986, and then the Fall of the Prime Wardens in 2002 leaves them out of existence for the next nine years, returning in 2011; a total of 21 years of existence. Meanwhile, Dark Watch doesn’t form until 1999! They only get a total of 17 years around. And finally, the Southwest Sentinels don’t pop up until almost the end of the multiverse era.
So in total, there are only seven or eight years in which more than two superhero teams are even active. Not much space for a lot of rotations in there.
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Contrast that with the RPG era, where there are (by default) at least three teams active between Daybreak, the Sentinels of Freedom, and Guise’s Neighborhood Watch. Presumably some form of Dark Watch is also active, and unless your players are using established heroes there’s a team built around their PCs as well.
The RPG doesn’t work as well with “solo books” as it does with teams, so across the multiverse there’s going to be a lot of player-created teams.
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Given that her powers are explicitly tied to chaos magic, I suspect that it’s going to happen no matter what shape, and trying for a more “harmless” shape will just cause a Staypuff Marshmallow Man situation. That said, I also suspect that her later ability to control the Mecha-Rex is the result of her training under Tachyon. A good example of “sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from SCIENCE!” Or, she got better at programming (especially after building Onmnitron-U) and started incorporating more of that in her work rather than relying on the pieces of herself that she shoves into the pile of stuff. Bit like “Soulfire” in the Dresden Files and how it’s initially used, vs how it’s used after the user gets some training.
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But I get the gameplay reason. Though part of that seems to be because variants were more a bonus thing, rather than included in the game boxes. It would be interesting to see alternate teams in the various variants. Like that magic-based F5 with Argent Adept and the Golem Armor Bunker.
So, we learned all the way back in the Disparate Reinforcements episode that Omni-Unity did not leave through a mist-gate and is still in Universe One, scheming to unify this universe under one mind.
So, when she shows back up again, is she gonna start calling Unity “father”? How’s Benchmark and Omnitron-U gonna take that?
I’m more curious about what the interaction would be between her and Omnitron-U. Given that the only info that C&A have said, IIRC, is that our robo-boi is just “Omnitron,” that raises some questions. I wonder if the two of them have enough sense of self to remain separate beings, or if they’ve somehow merged.
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Yeah, they’ve confirmed that there’s a Dark Watch consisting of Fixer, Expat, Harpy Pinion, and Setback, and that it’s become a bigger organization that can include your PCs like the Sentinels of Freedom.
Plus Void Guard’s still around (albeit in space; Lifeline hangs out with them, but I don’t know if he’s considered a member), and there are the new Paradigms and Prime Wardens teams.
So there’s actually a whopping seven active teams, with three new additions since the end of the Multiverse Era.
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Very true, although if you look at Marvel and DC, team uniforms for these sorts of teams are pretty rare!
The Fantastic Four have a uniform. The X-Men started with one, but cycle through periods with them and periods without; the same is true for most of their spin-off teams. The Avengers don’t; neither do Excalibur, the New Warriors, the Champions, the Defenders, the Guardians of the Galaxy or the Eternals.
In DC comics, the Green Lantern corps have uniforms and so do the Marvel Family, but that’s about it. The Justice League and its incarnations don’t, since its heroes are all pretty much pre-existing, nor do the Teen Titans and its spinoffs. Doom Patrol sometimes has a sort-of-unified style, but not a uniform. Legion of Superheroes have a ring. The Birds of Prey and the Suicide Squad just take whomever, as do the Elite and the Outsiders.
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Challengers of the Unknown have had uniforms in more incarnations than not. Blackhawks too. You could debate whether they’re actually hero teams in the way (say) the FF are, but they’ve both gotten into some pretty gonzo adventures over the years, especially the Challengers who have at least one actual nemesis supervillain. Could make an argument for the Metal men having at least a theme look, if not a uniform because they’re all 24/7 nudists.
Not 100% sure I’d want to play a game around an entirely team of heroes who all have Metal, Elasticity and sort-of Shape-Changing, though.
DC’s also very fond of “shared costume look” dynasties, which the Marvels fall under as well as many of the Bat- and Super-Family heroes. Marvel Comics doesn’t do that as often, although ironically their own first two Marvels were both wearing variants of the kree guy’s second costume - with midriff window for Carol until she decided to get her own look(s) later on.
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I totally forgot about the Challengers of the Unknown! Yeah, they count.
I’m not sure about the Blackhawks, though. They’re not actually a superhero team, are they? I thought they were a military unit, more akin to SHIELD agents or the Wild Pack.
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Fixer Mantra, Expat, Harpy Pinion, and Setback. But yeah: Sentinels of Freedom, the Watch, the Wardens, the Paradigms, Void Guard, Daybreak, Neighborhood Watch, and I got the impression that GLOBAL is also a sort of superteam organization. And maybe the new Virtuosos of the Void? Although I wasn’t under the impression that Daybreak was accepting new members, nor that Neighborhood Watch was the sort of superteam that PCs could be a part of as their own party. Not sure about Void Guard, we really don’t know much about them in the RPG era at all.
I’m amused that there doesn’t seem to be any reason at all that Scavenger Unity has an alternate costume, but the whole start of that story is hand-waved.
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Clearly it was laundry day.
Kind of? Depends on when you read them. They started off fighting in WW2 as a private fighter squadron/commando unit fighting the Axis, similar to (say) Haunted Tank or Sgt. Rock. In the 50s the book transitioned to more of a scifi spin (not unlike the Challengers) and fought a lot of would-be world-conqueror types with various wonder-weapons and weird monsters. In 1967 DC made the calamitous decision to turn them into a flat-out super-team (with presidential approval, no less) complete with some extremely goofy costumes, an airship HQ and one of them having an Iron Man style power suit. That lasted around a year before they reverted back to their old blue/black uniforms, but the book was cancelled shortly thereafter. They’ve been revived a few times since with retconned histories, usually as good-guy mercenary/spy-fi types (often fighting new version of old supervillain-ish menaces. Modern writers seem fond of entangling them with various versions of Hawkman for some reason.
I’d rate them as being very similar to the Challengers, albeit with a more military origin instead of the airplane crash/living on borrowed time thing. For most of their history they’ve been non-powered folks who wind up running into a lot of the kind of stuff superheroes deal with, from alien invasions to evil geniuses with daft plans for conquest to supernatural shenanigans.
Guise will take help from anyone who can tolerate him. The cat that lives with him is a member of the team, for cripes sake. It’s not very hard to make a character that would fit in with that pack of screwballs. Heck, I bet the team could really use a “helpful” cosmic imp hanging around to counterbalance Wager-Master.
Sure, anyone could join Neighborhood Watch. But it’s not a superordinate organization like the old teams, which can supervise entire PC teams, the way the Sentinels of Freedom supervises Daybreak.
Oh yeah, I forgot about G.L.O.B.A.L. and the Virtuosos. That makes nine total.
My impression is that the Sentinels of Freedom, Dark Watch, G.L.O.B.A.L., the Virtuosos of the Void, and maybe the Paradigms are all willing to accept new members / sponsor PC teams.
(Although it would be unusual — but interesting — to have an all-Virtuoso team.)
Meanwhile, the New Prime Wardens, Daybreak, Void Guard, and Guise’s Neighborhood Watch seem like they wouldn’t — although I could see Neighborhood Watch accepting maybe one or two new members, or possibly setting up a group of PCs as a new chapter in a different, nearby neighborhood, and having semi-frequent crossovers.
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This week’s Letters Page implied that the Prime Wardens are also restructuring as a superteam, just called The Wardens. I don’t recall having heard that before.
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I think Daybreak is actually part of Sentinels of Freedom and not their own “group” in this context, as they’re attending the school there, etc.
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