Another story idea along these lines:
Writers’ Room: Naturalist Does Something That’s Definitely Heroic and a Good Idea and Does Not Accidentally Create a Villain or Somehow Make Things Worse
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Clearly we need a team-up. “Two Well-Intentioned Bozos Manage To Do Something Right For Once” isn’t the best title for a story, though. 
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“Local Boys Make Good”
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Because everyone would assume Setback is one of them.
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Starting to realize that “Well-Intentioned Bozo” may be a somewhat common archetype outside of the Freedom Five.
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Accurate. Kind of a lot of Booster Golds in the setting.
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2/5ths of Darkwatch and 1/6th of the Freedom Five also qualify…
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I’m not sure “Two Well-Intentioned Bozos Who Aren’t Setback Manage to Do Something Right For Once” is much of an improvement. “Two Well-Intentioned Bozos Who Aren’t Setback Or Guise Manage To Do Something Right For Once” is even worse.
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I was trying to be gracious and consider Unity as “F5-adjacent” so I could get away with giving at least one hero team the credit of being both well-intentioned and competent, lol.
As otherwise…
Yeah, Setback and Harpy for Dark Watch.
4/5th of the Prime Wardens. Fanatic I’d question if she’s “well-intentioned”. (I would have said Tempest is actually well-intentioned and competent but then I remembered oh right Tempersonation, so never mind.)
Mainstay and Idealist for the SWs. Writhe is not well-intentioned, Medico is actually both well-intentioned and competent up until Malpractice Medico at least.
Daybreak is 4/5ths (Muse just out there being Carrying You All On my Back Girl).
Outside of the teams we have arguably Benchmark, Lifeline, Naturalist, the Soul Twins eventually, possibly Sky-Scraper (although I think she’s more just very socially awkward than actually incompetent).
Everyone else I feel like “I’d question they count as well-intentioned enough” or “they’re actually competent”. I mean I guess you could say Alpha’s well-intentioned and competent too when she’s not accidentally going all wolf and eating people she shouldn’t have?
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Sentinel Comics does need more editorial nonsense.
Is Booster all that well-intentioned, though? I mean, aren’t his primary goals goofing off and getting rich and famous in the past? : )
I’d also question whether Guise is well-intentioned. I guess he can be at times, especially after the Scholar’s death. :’ (
I think Haka and AA are both very competent (when they’re not fighting Apostate or Ambuscade, that is).
I honestly think that, at most, Alpha’s eaten a single-digit number of people. (Which I think is much less than the number of people just murdered by Expat, Fanatic, or Parse.)* Alpha’s whole schtick in my mind is that she is extraordinarily better at quelling the wolf within than practically any other werewolf.
Anyway, though, yeah, Captain Cosmic is definitely a well-intentioned bozo; heck, his DE First Appearance incap side is called “Starstruck Rube:”
I do think, in general terms, though, that the Naturalist is pretty competent; sure, he made one huge blunder that created a pretty bad villain, but that’s only one incident.
All this talk is making me want to make some sort of visual diagram-chart-thingy for this:
*Wait, why are all of Sentinel’s murder-heroes women? That’s a weird coincidence that I don’t think I noticed before.
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Ah, he moved past that years ago, despite the occasional brief relapse. Even in the early days he did sincerely want to be a real hero, he just wasn’t at all prepared for how hard that actually turned out to be. And much like Guise, his idea of “well intentioned” is often at odds with reality owing to lack of forethought. Guise did form the Neighborhood Watch, and is arguably the only actual bozo on the team. Even the cat is just being a cat.
Haka for sure, to the point where most villains (especially Ambuscade) need serious plot armor to present as an actual menace to him. AA seems to screw up kind of a lot when he’s on his own, although his team performance isn’t quite so bad.
Just imagine what would have happened if Haka had agreed to get mentored in self-control when she offered. Might not have needed that Fanatic purge at all.
I feel like Chrono-Ranger tends to eliminate a fair few of his bounties when they aren’t bring 'em back alive types, although that may be my imagination. I doubt haunted-zombie Mister Fixer is letting everyone walk away from a fight these days, especially when his more squeamish teammates aren’t around. Writhe is definitely “vanishing” people sometimes, which might be a fate worse than death. They’re less hunt-and-kill types than the three gals you mentioned, but still people henchmen get paid a hazard bonus for facing. As is KNYFE, for that matter. She plays too rough. Not sure where to put post-Arena Fashion.
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I’m starting to wonder if we should ask a mod to split this tangent off, heh.
You mean AA where 9/10ths of his supporting cast consists of people who exist primarily to tell him how he’s messing everything up? AA the dude who almost single-handedly doomed the entire multiverse were it not for La Comodora’s quick thinking? That AA?
I don’t think it’s a coincidence, I suspect there’s some of C&A intentionally genderbending the usual “male murderhobo” trope.
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No, CON only sends him after monsters, never humans, until the plot where CON gets corrupted and sends him after Ambuscade. And then Chrono doesn’t do it, of course, and gets stuck.
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If you say so. The art on some of those bounty cards sure don’t seem to be monsters to me. Not always human either, but aliens and mutants are people too.
Forgot to also note that Naturalist is a man where large chunks of his antagonist list are people he somehow enabled or screwed over.
Yeah, I think that that might be prudent. Hey @moderators, could you be so kind as to oblige?
Huh, well, that’s good to know. : ) I think my only real exposure to him was one collection of Justice League International and the Batman: The Brave & the Bold TV show.
Yeah, Guise has undeniably become more heroic over time. Like I said, the Scholar’s mentorship and subsequent sacrifice helped a lot. In a way, it’s kind of like Guise’s existence up into the RPG Era has been him growing into hero-hood.
That’s . . . probably true. Although I would think that the Southwest Sentinels book would be a bit too light-hearted for stuff like that to happen . . . but then again Writhe is a very un-lighthearted character in general, so I dunno. I’d certainly think that his “vanishings” likely increase in frequency over time, from Adamant Sentinels to Void Guard and into the OblivAeon Event, although I would guess that he’ll probably lighten up now that he’s lost the shadow cloak.
I also think that Writhe just straight-up stabs people with shadow-spikes sometimes, and he also literally pulled Biomancer apart, which would’ve likely killed almost anyone else.
She strikes me as the type of character that dislikes killing but views it as necessary at extreme times.
Hmm, I’m not sure exactly who the 9/10 number refers to, but going by his supporting cast episode . . .
- I would argue that Bobby Addison (his former boss and owner of the bar he worked at) exists to tell him how to fix his life, not how he’s messing it up, which is a fine and perhaps unnecessary distinction, but I think that the point is that he does get AA to become more dedicated to his Virtuoso-ing which is a good thing.
- Rita Jackson (leader of the homeless camp he stays at for awhile) is a mother figure for him, but I don’t get the vibe that she’s constantly criticising him.
- And his parents are just super cold to him, nor do I think they really care about what he’s up to.
- His cousin, Olivia Drake, I didn’t get the sense is overly critical of him.
- And of course there’s everyone’s favourite Soothsayer C., who does constantly tell AA how terrible he is at magic, but to be fair that’s something that Carmichael does to everyone, not just AA. Although I do think that Adept’s improvisational nature makes Carmichael more annoyed at him than most.
You’re referring to the “summoning all the Virtuoso-spirits which OblivAeon was gonna use to annihilate Universe 1” thing, right? I mean, I feel like AA had no way to know that that would make Universe 1 closer to another reality, any more than any other heroes knew that any of their actions could’ve done the same. La Comodora is (was) in a very unique position of being outside the timestream and able to actually kind of see OblivAeon’s multiversal machinations.
Anyways, the reason I said he was very competent was because I was remember this bit from his episode:
[Argent Adept] becomes a pretty major character across the brand, but he’s somewhat problematic for the writers in that he always wins, which runs the risk of him being less interesting than other more vulnerable characters.
WT’s notes then go on to say that most of his stories follow the same pattern of “it’s a struggle, he buckles down, gathers his power, unleashes his power, he wins, the end.” So, I suppose it’s fair to say that he has lots of power, but I’ll concede that maybe he doesn’t make the best choices / is a little too improvisational / pretty flighty and distant and bad at interaction. So, I guess it depends on one’s definition of competency.
Just looking at his Bounties, they show Akash’Bhuta, Doc Tusser, Ambuscade, Citizen Truth, Plague Rat, and the Crackjaw Crew. Akash is definitely a “monster,” and I think Jim and CON view Doc Tusser and Plague Rat as monsters as well, although I 'd question if Tusser really is, and Plague Rat was once human, could become human(ish) again, and is pretty sentient if animalistic. If I recall correctly, Citizen Truth and Ambuscade were explicitly because of CON’s malfunctioning, but I don’t recall any sort of justification for the Crackjaw Crew.
Sure, but most aren’t. Of his official card game nemeses, Equity, Deadline, and Ambuscade were entirely the instigators, but I can’t really recall or find the motivation for Professor Pollution opposing him. And I don’t think that Prospect exists because of him. So, really the only villains that I think the Naturalist can be even partly blamed for are Necrosis and Sludgeon; and even then, I think I’d place most of the blame on Vince Snyder. Sure, Naturalist was partly responsible, but I feel like Vince Snyder is mostly responsible.
For that matter, I think that Vince Snyder ought to be considered the Naturalist’s greatest foe — he embodies the corporate greed and exploitation that the Naturalist’s sworn to oppose far better than the victims he’s created in Necrosis and Sludgeon.
Going back to Captain Cosmic, I think this excerpt from WT’s notes of the Definitive Edition episode summarises his flaws pretty well:
[H]e gives of himself even when maybe he shouldn’t. [. . .] He’s not that he’s being duped in particular, just that he’s very willing for self-sacrifice even if the person asking isn’t terribly trustworthy.
CC’s main flaws are simply virtues — selflessness and trustingness — that he exhibits to such high degrees that they come back to bite him. Which makes me wonder — if one were to build him in the RPG, would his Personality simply be Naive?
I was thinking how Rita and the other homeless folks are the only people who aren’t either critical or kinda begrudging towards him.
To add to your list, the Void spirits he summons are pretty aghast by what he’s been doing, and the Diamond Diva isn’t particularly encouraging either.
And in that episode they note that it’s not hard for Diamond Diva to be a better Virtuoso because Anthony screws up a lot. Which… TBH he kinda does.
Sometimes I note out of my two main fave boys that AZ gets more awesome to me every time he features in an LP episode, but with Argent the more we hear about his escapades in the podcast I sort of went from fangirling him as a cool bard, to realizing he’s more sort of an entertaining trainwreck.
(For added funsies, the back of his First Appearance variant implies that Bal’Taranerach came about in the first place because of some screwup he did with his magic.)
I do remember that bit, but it seems to be a thing C&A kind of retconned over time judging by how they seem to characterize him nowadays.
As for Naturalist:
From the Shipping Episode:
Nina Arbor was Naturalist’s former assistant who took over the running of his company once he became the Naturalist (and was instrumental to the process of turning the company in a “good” direction). When he is eventually ousted from the company, she’s left behind and kind of works as a double agent (doing her job by day, but sneaking in to disrupt the “bad” stuff at night). Eventually, one of these sabotage jobs results in a large radiation backlash which twists her mind and body so that she has to wear this weird getup to survive. This is the origin of Professor Pollution. She and Naturalist were once a thing.
So, yep, poor guy’s former lover ends up as one of his worst villains.
The core problem is that Vince Snyder is Naturalist’s original sin as the first villain he accidentally enabled.
Basically, I admit I don’t base “competency” here on “losing” because it’s a comic book and in comic books the vast majority of the time the heroes are going to win, even if it takes them to the end of a whole story arc to do so or whatever. A story where the villain absolutely comes out on top is often pretty rare, even among the more hard-luck heroes.
Instead I think of it more as “how many minor or major twists did you have to accumulate along the way”.
So you get characters like Argent where yes they typically win but boy howdy do they accumulate the minor and major twists.
He’s a classic D&D style troll with superior regen. Trolls are people. Nasty people, but so are many folks.
The Rat’s definitely human and a victim of disease and scientific experimentation to boot, and he’s pretty clearly responding to treatments now that he’s getting some. As far as I’m concerned FrivYeti’s Lab Rat version is the proper future for the guy. Even drug dealers aren’t always beyond redemption.
The excuse that “we thought they were monsters” doesn’t cut it for me in a superhero setting. The canon setting is light on monstrous heroes, but I’m a fan of the Hulk and the Thing, among others.
I re-listened to the episode yesterday to remind myself and Chrono-Ranger refused to try killing any of them, although he had to argue with CON about the first one (Truth, who gets shot in the leg). So at least there’s that. Ambuscade got taken out with a time-bubble grenade while his bombs were disarmed on Wagner Base, and the band was explicitly a “no-kill, just wreck their tour van” job from the start. Presumably CON doesn’t like their music as much as Wager Master.
So he’s less people-murder-y than I recalled, but I’m still calling him out for having had a very narrow view of personhood. That seems to have improved for Jim, and CON is a whole new iteration of itself as part of Time-Slinger - although frankly, I worry what it would do to buy Jim more chronal energy to keep him alive.
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This a lot of the thing, really. Ambuscade wasn’t the big unusual deal for being a person he was sent after, so much as it was unusual for CON going “no you have to kill this one”.
Also Chrono was called out as feeling Doc Tusser was pushing the line between “monster” and “person” for him, implied to be the first sign CON was going weird.
(Also also in the whole thing of “Who in Sentinel Comics is a killer” a while back, Chrono is not called out as a pacifist. He will kill people if he has to, he just doesn’t like that being specifically his job.)
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True . . . I actually think it’s kind of likely that Drake’s the worst Virtuoso so far, but I also think a large part of that is because he didn’t have a previous Virtuoso to mentor him. Everyone else, Diamond Diva included, did have a mentor. But Anthony had to figure everything out for himself. Which explains why he didn’t know that it’s a bad idea to break Xu’s Bell or summon a bunch of Voidspirits.
(Also I feel like Diamond Diva would probably be “better” than most Virtuosos, as she was kinda created to just be the best Virtuoso.)
I think his story is definitely one of having a bunch of power and responsibility thrust upon him all of a sudden (moreso than the average superhero, that is), and he kind of spends the whole Multiverse Era learning how to deal with that, and yes, taking lots of twists along the way. But I do think that, Post-OblivAeon, he’s gotten things pretty together.
Does it? I mean, it shows a Void-monster, but is there anything that really confirms that it’s Bal’Teranerach, and not any of the other myriads of Void-monsters he’s faced over the years?
Maybe? Also, I think that something to keep in mind is that the window that we have into Sentinel Comics is very small — we’ve only had 2 VotV writer’s rooms, for example — and so it’s harder to discern any characterisations or tendencies for it compared to “real” comics.
Jim also went after the Tengu, GloomWeaver (see Displaced Armory), and Dreamer’s projections (Sudden Contract), although that last one might be less “he was sent after it” and more “it just showed up while he was on another job” judging by the card’s title and flavour text.
Yeah, I feel like he’s the kind of guy who, if someone’s shooting at him, he’ll shoot back, but he doesn’t like waking up in the morning thinking “Today I am going to murder someone.”
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