Not to be confused with that Morgon guy from the island of Hed. His title has a hyphen in it, much like Spider-Man.
2 Likes
And one more HeroForge before Iâm back to searching for public domain art:
The Red Scare
Type: Standard Event
Key Appearance: Libertyâs Dream #24, May 1965
Traits:
- Frightened Crowds d8
- Agent Provocateurs d8
- Hidden Gadgets d8
GREEN
Minor Twists
- Hidden Traitors: A group of civilians reveal that theyâre the Red Scareâs minions! Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 âRevealed Brawlerâ minions equal to the Min die.
- Hidden Explosives: A bomb suddenly goes off in someoneâs face! Roll the environment dice and Attack one hero with the Mid die.
Major Twist
- Collapsing Storefront: Down with the excesses of capitalism!. Roll the environment dice and Hinder all heroes nearby and any minions theyâre facing with the Mid die.
YELLOW
Minor Twists
- Trapped Civilians: Part of the crowd has been cut off from their escape routes and debris is falling! Create the following challenge: Get the civilians to safety. If the scene tracker reaches Red before the challenge is solved, the civilians are hurt or even killed!
- Fake Civilians: A civilian turns out to be a mannequin that attaches to you! Why does the Red Scare even have this? Hinder a Hero with the Max die; the PCs may decide which hero took the bait.
Major Twist
- ⌠Communists? A group of heavily-armed mercenaries in the Red Scareâs colors emerge to fight. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 âPower-Suited Commiesâ minions equal to the Mid die. They have +2 to damage saves and to Attack rolls, but leave immediately if the Red Scare is defeated.
RED
Minor Twists
- Acid Spray: A hero walks into the path of a devastating trap and is sprayed with red acid. Roll the environment dice and Attack a hero with the Min die. Hinder that hero with the Mid die. The penalty is persistent and exclusive.
- Locked In: The pattern of explosions traps a hero in a tight space! Create the following challenge: Clear the path. Until this challenge is resolved, that hero may not take any actions except this Overcome.
Major Twist
- The Gigâs Up: The enemies scatter, creating disasters in their wake to buy time to escape. Remove all minions from the scene. For each minion removed, create the following challenge: Deal with the disaster. Any disasters still outstanding at the end of the scene will hurt or kill civilians.
As Libertyâs Dream picked up steam, it often delved into politics in ways that skirted the lines of what was allowable under the Comics Code, with frequent complaints about how close many of Reverieâs opponents were coming to representing law enforcement or business leaders. After the third such complaint, Joe Manzetta went to the titleâs author, Quentin Jones, and all but begged him to include a storyline in which Reverie fought against Communists, just to create the impression that the publication cared. With a practiced innocent expression that Manzetta had learned to recognize as trouble, Jefferson agreed. He returned to his office, sat down with his artistic partner Charlie Lake, and laid out his plans for the Red Scare.
Libertyâs Dream #24 thus opened up with Reverie getting wind of strange activities taking place in a run-down part of Havenwood. Small-time crooks were suddenly spouting Soviet propaganda, having run-ins with the cops, and whipping up discontent with the state of the neighborhood into a frenzy. Whispers said that the mastermind of the affair was the Red Scare, a supervillain with the power to unlock the dreams in peopleâs hearts and bring them to life â so long as they committed themselves to the Cause.
It all sounded very suspicious to Reverie, and more than a little magical. At the very least, she expected that these âCommunistsâ were just looking for meat to turn against America, leaving them high and dry when the bill came due. She arrived in Havenwood looking for trouble, and it didnât take long for her to find it. There was Communist propaganda everywhere, most of it poorly written and even more poorly articulated, promising free money, an end to long working days, no more bosses breathing down your necks.
But Reverie couldnât find any trace of magic in the situation. She was just starting to wonder if she was dealing with an offshoot of a Soviet mind-controller like Iron Will, who she had previously fought alongside the Champions of Truth, when the Red Scare announced a major speech that would direct his âfollowersâ to âoverthrow the Capitalist Regimeâ. Confused and curious crowds, suspicious police officers, and federal agents began to gather, ready for trouble, and Reverie moved in to make sure that things didnât get out of hand.
Which they did. Agents of the Red Scare exploded out of the crowd, attacking police officers and civilians alike as bombs went off in local storefronts. Reverie used her powers to save people and stop the provocateurs, only to discover that they were just more small-time crooks in stolen gear. She confronted the Red Scare, only to discover that he was another small-time crook who had been paid a few hundred dollars to put on the suit, and the penny dropped.
Using her powers to race through the Underhill, Reverie emerged at the farthest point across town from the gathering â the Garamond Technological Research Center. There, she was able to ambush the true mastermind behind the Red Scare â the Red Herring! The capering villain had deliberately created a false Communist menace to distract the defenders of the city from his true target, grabbing more high-powered technology for his mercenary schemes. Reverie was able to stop the Herringâs robbery, but he escaped before she could corner him, promising with a glint in his eye that the two would meet again.
Jones deliberately held back the script until it was too late to change it. Manzetta was predictably furious, but after a roaring fight that was audible across the bullpen he reluctantly allowed it. The argument ended up being one of the factors that led to Jones leaving Venture Comics in 1966, preferring to make comics without an editor breathing down his neck.
Behind The Scenes:
This was one of those things that sort of reverse-engineered itself.
I wanted a Red Herring story. I had been plotting out other possible Soviet supervillains to fight Madame Liberty and a villain called âThe Red Scareâ popped into my mind, but it was pretty close to the Red Herring. And then I thought, âI absolutely bet he would make that a fake villain as a bitâ and then here we are.
I wasnât sure who to give it to originally; I was back and forth between this being a Libertyâs Dream story and a Covert Tactics one, and finally ended up flipping a coin. I like it as a âno, really, anyone can end up facing the Red Herringâ thing.
4 Likes
Have to wonder how many times that sort of ploy backfires on Red. Feels like one of those stories where a bunch of Actual Sinister Communist Infiltrators takes advantage of Red Herringâs schemes to try raiding the Garamond TRC at the same time he does. Nice of him to arrange such a convenient distraction, the Motherland will be quick to use this technology against the vile capitalists (who no doubt stole it from some noble communist genius in the first place).
2 Likes
Whirling Scottish Devil was better than Red Scare
(Classic Tick comics)
2 Likes
Probably not often, for reasons of style. The Red Herring is usually portrayed as being fully in control of the situation, at least until the heroes beat him (and even then, half the time heâs managed to succeed at his real objective.) Itâs pretty rare for someone to out-scheme him, and if it happened it would have to be a big name, not random folks. Like, I can imagine a story where Iron Will outmanoeuvres him. But since Red Herring is usually willing to get paid to be a distraction, there arenât a lot of times that people trick him into being one.
And for todayâs updateâŚ
The Levesque Advanced Science and Technology Centre (LAST)
Type: Standard Location
Key Appearance: Madame Liberty #292, April 1966
Traits:
- Advanced Technology d10
- Confused Security d10
- Terrified Scientists d8
GREEN
Minor Twists
- Collapsing Girders: A piece of the building caves in in front of you. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Mid die.
- LAST Patrol: Advanced security deploys, focused on protecting the equipment from the battle. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 âLAST Patrolâ minions equal to the Min die. They have +1 to Defend actions.
Major Twist
- Engine Blast: An experimental engine sends out a gout of flame that forces you back. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Max die.
YELLOW
Minor Twists
- Free Gear: Damage to the facility unlocks a gear locker. Roll the environment dice and Boost with the Max die. Give the bonus to whoever acts next.
- Collapsing Floor: A section of flooring gives way, and someone takes a fall. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Mid die. Hinder them with the Min die.
Major Twist
- Security Lockdown: The facility begins lockdown procedures, evacuating scientists and destroying sensitive materials. Advance the scene tracker one step.
RED
Minor Twists
- LAST Resort: Security forces grab experimental power gear and charge in wildly. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d10 âLAST Resortâ minions equal to the Max die. Whenever they roll either a â1â or the maximum result on their status die, step down their status die.
- Mistimed Lockdown: A group of civilians are trapped in a zone! Create the following challenge: Reverse the Lock Down. If the challenge is not resolved before a Lab Explosion takes place or the scene ends, the civilians are killed.
Major Twist
- Lab Explosion: One of the labsâ safety features breach in a devastating way. Roll the environment dice and target two adjacent zones. Attack all targets in both zones with the Max die, and then Hinder them with the Min die.
After returning to Europe from her brief arc in Vietnam, the writers of Madame Liberty quickly made sure to focus on traditional superheroic adventures defending European freedom from dangerous foreign powers and criminal superheroes. In November 1965, the team introduced a new supporting character for the title, Pierre Levesque. Levesque was a foppish but brilliant inventor whose father had founded a major industrial company with reconstruction money following the end of World War II; Pierre had inherited the company and largely left it to run itself while siphoning off funds for his personal projects. Fortunately for the company, his personal projects were wildly successfully, and the Levesque Advanced Science and Technology Centre (commonly called LAST) was soon the primary destination for European super-science.
Pierre was first introduced when Iron Will attempted to kidnap and brainwash him during a routine visit to oversee investments in West Berlin; Madame Liberty saved him, and out of gratitude he began supplying her with his latest gadgets for her adventures, providing her with a supersonic one-person jet and various cutting-edge tools that he wrote off as prototype experiments. Marianne actually liked the man, and for a few months there was a subplot about Rick Wilson being annoyed by Pierreâs flirtations, but the pair didnât go anywhere, and in *Madame Liberty #*293, in May 1966, Pierre was over the moon about his new girlfriend Mina, who he introduced to Marianne and Rick with great fanfare.
Mina made a couple of appearances over the next several months, and it was obvious from the first that she was up to something, but it wasnât until Madame Liberty #298 that the heroine discovered her secret â she was, in fact, Grand Duchess Gloria Mantalos, the White Mantis, in disguise! She had been secretly dating Pierre in order to steal his designs and technology, and was planning a raid on his facility to acquire everything that LAST had produced.
In Madame Liberty #299, Madame Liberty and Rick Wilson went to LAST to warn Pierre and confront White Mantis, only to discover that she had tricked the staff into thinking that they were imposters and turned the facility against them! The duo had to fight their way through the facility as White Mantisâs raid began, convincing security to change sides and finally saving Pierre from kidnapping by the skin of their teeth. Madame Liberty followed White Mantis back to Granlavia for a major confrontation, which took place in the following issue, leaving Pierre to rebuild his lab.
While that was the first major breach of LAST, the facility would continue to appear over the coming decades, with Pierre a common supporting character who found himself in trouble with an array of villains. During the AEGIS era, LAST was briefly a major AEGIS supplier before Covert Tactics was able to present evidence of the agencyâs duplicity to Pierre and convince him to sever his contracts, and he continued to provide technology to a few of his favourite superhero teams without the knowledge or approval of Levesque Industriesâ Board of Directions. Pierre eventually married another minor Covert Tactics supporting character, Janie McClinnon, in the late 1990s, and by the Diamond Age was semi-retired and allowing his daughter Cybele to handle the family business while he tinkered in his lab and enjoyed long vacations with his wife.
Behind The Scenes:
Weâve had a lot of tech supervillains, but not a lot of tech companies, so I thought I would use Madame Liberty to introduce a European one and flesh out a few minor characters at the same time. Itâs a fun White Mantis plot, a lab whose inventor is neither a superhero nor a supervillain but just an absent-minded professor, and some fun long-term development. Just donât get the scientists killed!
And speaking of vacations! I am off next week for my spouseâs birthday, so this thread will be a bit quiet. Iâll be back on the 27th, so feel free to keep the chatter going and guess about what environments might be coming up.
5 Likes
Enjoy your birthday-induced time off!
Heh. Iâm playing Aether Nexus all of a sudden.
For those who donât get it, that RPG uses the âMin or Max = Stepdownâ mechanic all over the place, usually with some kind of bonus for Max and often with a harsh penalty for a Min that tries to induce a Stepdown below d4. Fairly neat system IMO.
Whew, thatâs a rough one on the last couple of rounds in a normal scene, especially if the heroes have a couple of people OUT to mess up their action economy even further. Good argument for taking Red Overcome abilities.
2 Likes
So is that the LAST one?
1 Like
Until we get back! 
Which is now, withâŚ
Cliffâs Diner
Type: Hero Location
Key Appearance: Into the Green #50, April 1967
Traits:
- Breakable Furniture d10
- Loud Jukebox d8
- Busy Kitchen d6
GREEN
Minor Twists
- Wet Floor: The mop bucket spills, covering the floor with soapy water. Roll the environment dice and Hinder anyone on the ground with the Min die.
- A Slice of Pie: Thereâs only one piece of Cliffâs famous apple pie left! Create a new challenge: Eat some pie. When someone finishes the challenge, roll the environment dice and Boost them with the Max die. If the scene reaches the Yellow zone, the piece of pie is smashed. Remove the challenge.
Major Twist
- The Football Team: The college team is here to celebrate their win. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 âFootball Squadâ minions equal to the Min die. When they Boost each other, they roll twice and use the better result.
YELLOW
Minor Twists
- A New Tune: Someone sneaks a nickel into the jukebox and puts on some great fight music! Roll the environment dice and Boost with the Mid die. Apply the bonus to any action taken in time with the music until the start of the next environment phase.
- Broken Chairs: Someone gets kicked through a chair, but now thereâs chair legs to use to fight! Roll the environment dice. Hinder one target with the Mid die and Boost one target with the Min die.
Major Twist
- Order Up: Cliff tosses a sandwich out of the kitchen for a hero. Roll the environment dice and Boost one hero equal to the Min die. They Recover equal to the Mid die.
RED
Minor Twists
- HOLD IT: Cliffâs yell of annoyance gives everyone a moment of pause. Roll the environment dice and Defend all targets with the Mid die until the start of the next turn.
- Grease Fire: A blast of flame erupts from the kitchen door as Cliff deliberately sets a fire against an enemy who got too close. Roll the environment dice. Attack one villain target with the Max die and Hinder them with the Min die.
Major Twist
- Here, Aspen! Aspen bounds in to help. Add Aspen (Venture Comics: The Classic Years, pg. 130) to the scene. Roll his status die and Boost one hero with the result. If Aspen is already in play, restore his status die to d12 and he takes an extra turn now.
Major Silver Age heroes in Venture Comics had highly variable secret identities, ranging from Skybreakerâs true identity only being known to Rhonda Randall all the way to Flatfoot simply existing as a public hero. Greenheart was one of the more secretive characters, theoretically disguised as Italian exchange student Val Turner at Grovedale College, but over the course of the sixties her secret identity was revealed to a growing number of people, mostly because she was a terrible liar. âVal awkwards fails to hide her identity from various supporting cast members who in turn pretend that they donât know that sheâs a superheroâ became a running joke in Into The Green, with a new person learning Greenheartâs secret identity every three or four issues.
Val and Ginnieâs group of friends, all of whom had learned the heroâs identity and gamely pretended that they hadnât, tended to hang out at a diner on the edge of campus called Cliffâs. The eponymous owner and chef of the diner was never drawn, hanging out in the kitchen and yelling out orders; Ginnie worked at the diner as a waitress, and Val enjoyed exploring the mysterious modern foods that the diner had on offer.
The illusion that her secret identity was secure was broken in Into the Green #50, when Dr. Freak attacked Grovedale with his latest army of monstrous minions, hoping to force Greenheart out of hiding and learn how her powers operated. Freak had no idea who Greenheart really was, and indeed hadnât considered that she might have a secret identity at all; he believed that she lived in the wilderness and emerged to fight crime. But what he did have was a map of locations that she tended to appear from, and he send squads of twisted animals to each of those locations to flush the hero out of hiding. When the attack began, Val was at the diner with Ginnie and her friends, and panicked as she tried to fight the creatures while covering up her capabilities. Aspen bounded in from the forest to help, but the enemies were everywhere and the gathered students werenât up to the task of protecting themselves.
After a couple pages of awkward slapstick comedy in which Val put herself in harmâs way to protect everyone without revealing herself, Cliff yelled out from the kitchen for Val to âdo her plant thing before weâre all et up!â Realizing that her identity was busted, and with lives on the line, Val revealed herself as Greenheart and crushed the monsters, before racing out to fight them across the city.
In the aftermath, Val returned to Cliffâs to shamefacedly apologize for lying to her friends, only to find them gathered around and ready to shamefacedly apologize for lying to her. Theyâd known that her secret was important to her, and had been trying to let her live a normal life as much as possible, but that had just caused her to get hurt trying to protect them and keep her secret. Even Cliff admitted (from the kitchen) that heâd seen Val go into the bathroom and then emerge from the alley as Greenheart three different times.
The incident became a running gag both within the pages of Into the Green and in the broader readership, with Valâs not-so-secret identity very slowly eroding over the course of the 1970s before imploding completely in the Iron Age. But Cliffâs stayed a gathering place for her and the friends who were willing to treat her as just a person, not a symbol, and while Cliff grumbled sometimes about the small-time villains that crashed the place, he also made sure to always have a piece of pie at hand for his favourite superhero.
Behind The Scenes:
I got halfway through writing this up as a college bar and then I remembered that heroes werenât allowed to drink alcohol before 1971 so that was right out. So we get a diner instead!
Greenheartâs secret identity is something that Iâve been musing over for a while; I had indicated in her Silver Age writeup that she had one, but by the Iron Age sheâs been written as just being Valeria Tertia and having no real civilian life to speak of. So I thought I would thread the needle and explain why her secret identity faded away.
I think that Ginnie Turner and the college kids never fully vanish from Greenheart stories, but the more that her storylines focus on True Rome stuff the less present they are. Cliffâs definitely sticks around and makes cameos in other Grovedale heroesâ stories, because itâs a fun little easter egg.
5 Likes
Well, sort of. That was pure Comics Code self-censorship, and sure as heck didnât apply before 1954. There were quite a few instances of heroic (and villainous) tippling in the 1940s and early 50s, and not just in capes books. Any proper cowboy who couldnât hold his liquor in those days was not going to go very far, and racket-busting mystery men throughout the 30s were still dealing with the legacy of former bootleggers turned generalist crime bosses.
1967 though, yeah, wrong time period for hanging out in a hooch joint for mainstream publishers anyway. Just a little too early.
2 Likes
Oh yeah, should have specified that Silver Age heroes donât drink alcohol.
I think Silver Age villains were allowed to drink, and possibly even Silver Age civilians. Iâd have to check to be sure, though.
1 Like
Maybe if they were subtle about it? Think I remember some scenes of (for ex) Barry and Iris and/or Ralph and Sue out on civilian dinner dates in the 1960s where there obviously drinks on the table that certainly could and probably should (by the norms of the time) have been alcoholic but that was carefully never mentioned. There must have been a few short bar scenes near the end of the decade when Batman was rousting thugs, and Bruce went to a lot of society parties where expecting people to be drinking soda would have been pretty implausible.
Given the CCAâs supposed focus on âsaving the childrenâ anything they thought the innocent youngsters wouldnât recognize as boozing it up might have gotten a free pass?
Hey Friv (and the other ~5 folks who read this thread)! Iâve got a question for you.
I suppose this question doesnât really have to do with environments, but I figured it nonetheless makes more sense to ask it here than to briefly Zhu Long the previous thread.
Many ârealâ comic book characters often have one or more epithets.* Many of these are impressive titles, like The Man of Steel, The Man of Tomorrow, The Last Son of Krypton,** The Caped Crusader, The Boy Wonder, The Amazing Amazon, The Fastest Man Alive, The Emerald Gladiator, The Emerald Archer, The Manhunter from Mars, etc. Then there are also those that are more goofy nicknames, like The Big Blue Boy Scout, The Big Red Cheese, Shellhead, Winghead, etc.
So my question to you is, do you have any of these sorts of names for any of the Venture heroes? Is Wonderer called The Genial Genie? Is Greenheart The Leafy Champion? Et cetera.
And I suppose that this question does relate more to the nitty gritty writing of issues than the broader story arcs which have been your focus, so it does makes sense that itâs largely been unaddressed.
*I imagine the reason for this is that Golden and Solver Age comics typically had narration boxes accompanying every single panel, and reusing the heroâs name that much would be seen as poor taste.
**AKA 3/4 of the replacement Supermen.
2 Likes
Not me personally, although Iâve played at some table where some or all characters either had or grew into epithets - often involuntarily, like a nickname attaches itself to you. Villains tend to wind up with them in-play more often than PCs IME, in which case theyâre usually at least mildly insulting and meant to mock the baddy.
The line between epithet and nickname seems hazy to me, now that I think about it. Mister Fantastic strikes me as a purely self-assigned epithet that most folks donât use (to Reedâs quiet annoyance, no doubt), while Benâs use of Stretcho could be either a nickname or a mildly sarcastic epithet.
The theory about epithets arising from caption boxes seems reasonable, but I note that theyâre frequently used diegetically as well, with other characters addressing the owner with them as though the epithet was a name or title.
1 Like
The short answer is that yes, those epithets definitely exist, and also that I have not sat down to figure them out. Iâve got the âshorthandâ bits that get used for trade dress and occasional crossovers (The Spectacular Skybreaker, The Glorious Greenheart, The Mysterious Madame Liberty, The Fearless Flatfoot) but not actual nicknames.
Skybreaker probably has some playing on his actual heritage - I bet narration calls him the Hound of Ulster sometimes. Flatfoot would have a few robot-themed titles, Greenheart is Champion of the Green in some narration boxes, and there must be some duo phrase for Madame Liberty and Kid Liberty in the Golden Age.