D-Listers . We know them (occasionally.) We love them (rarely.) We consider them amazing trivia references for deep cut fans to goof around about. And while the current state of Venture Comics includes all of its successes, we haven’t delved into the failures.
This project is going to examine Venture Comics’ most semi-popular deep cuts, a selection of heroes and villains who just never made it. Some of them were too derivative, some were too weird, others just kept almost making it before sinking into obscurity.
So, how’s this going to work?
The Criteria
In order to write D-Listers, I need to define them. The rules of D-Listers are as follows:
- A D-List hero has to have managed at least twelve issues as a main character, and have gotten no more than thirty-six across all of Venture Comics. It’s okay if they’ve made minor or supporting roles elsewhere; people love to reference deep cuts, after all. So heroes who were in two issues of Venture into the Unknown in the 1960s do not count, and neither do people like the Remnants, who despite their relatively short run managed a TV show and are effectively C-Listers of the Venture world.
- A D-List villain has to have had six or fewer major storylines, regardless of whether those storylines were one issue or a full trade paperback. Like the heroes, they can have made small appearances all over the place.
- Neither a D-List hero nor a D-list villain can have gotten a successful reboot as a different character later, either in a new role, as a legacy character, or by flipping from hero to villain (or vice versa). The Silver Age Shadowspear would have been a D-lister, but her Iron Age incarnation pushed her into prominence and would bar her from this list.
- When I write a team of D-Listers, I will only be writing up the most ‘successful’ member of the team, with the other members relegated to the summary writeup. There may be one exception to this in the Plutonium Age: I haven’t decided just how many hero slots I’m willing to give to really underscoring the Champions of Freedom yet.
The Process
I’m planning to write twenty D-List heroes, and twenty-eight D-List villains. I will updating four times a week rather than five, working my way chronologically through Venture Comics rather than doing all heroes and then all villains. The numbers by age will be:
- Golden Age: Two weeks (four heroes and four villains)
- Silver Age: Two weeks (four heroes and four villains)
- Bronze Age: Two weeks (three heroes and five villains)
- Iron Age: Three weeks (four heroes and eight villains)
- Plutonium Age: Three weeks (five heroes and seven villains)
The Iron and Plutonium Ages are getting a bit more, because they were both the focus of big pushes in terms of how many comics Venture was pumping out. Diamond Age isn’t getting anything, because it’s too soon to tell if any of the characters introduced in its first year are going to fail.
For heroes, I will be using the Venture Comics creation rules, except that I will use 3d10 as my generation for each stage. If any element gets picked by two heroes, it will be rendered ineligible and rolling it will slide down to the next eligible option.
For villains, I am doing something slightly different! For Approach and Archetype, I will be using 3d10 as my generation for each stage, but the table that I’ve created will treat 17-18 as a single result, and 19-20 as a single result. The tables will look as follows:
| Result | Approach | Archetype |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Relentless | Predator |
| 2 | Skilled | Inventor |
| 3 | Prideful | Bruiser |
| 4 | Underpowered | Guerilla |
| 5 | Bully | Indomitable |
| 6 | Disruptive | Overlord |
| 7 | Focused | Formidable |
| 8 | Mastermind | Inhibitor |
| 9 | Specialized | Loner |
| 10 | Overpowered | Squad |
| 11 | Generalist | Fragile |
| 12 | Tactician | Thief |
| 13 | Creator | Invader |
| 14 | Ninja | Domain |
| 15 | Adaptive | Warden |
| 16 | Dampening | Calamity |
| 17-18 | Leech | Legion |
| 19-20 | Ancient | Titan |
Eagle-eyed readers may notice that there are four archetypes listed that are not in the core book. These archetypes will be revealed when they’re drawn! After all, why not use D-Listers to experiment with nonsense?
Upgrades and Masteries will be randomized using 3d12, as with the previous villains.
We’ll begin on Monday, in the early days of the Golden Age. I have a very rough idea of what some of these heroes and villains will look like, because I’ve got spots open in the timeline for a lot of them and I already know which comics are around in each age, but there’s a ton of variety possible. So I hope you will enjoy as we delve into the world of D-Listers!