The History of Venture Comics!

[FrivYeti]

Heading into the Iron Age, I have two administrative notes! The first is that for these last two phases, I’m shifting the villain archetype randomizer to d10, d4, d4 from d8, d6, d6. That does heavily weight the first four numbers, but it evens out the rest and avoids the duplication problem I was dealing with. The second is that for this phase, if I reboot a character who is a core member of a team, I may narratively reboot the whole team and only write up the one character. This is because we have thirty-one characters at the moment, and only twenty people for the whole Iron Age, and I want to actually write new characters reasonably often. It also means that I can write one character for each of the eight launch titles of the Iron Age, beginning with…

The Randomizers:
Background 1, 4, 1 [Options: Blank Slate, Criminal, Military, Academic, Dynasty]
Power Source 5, 7, 7 [Options: Mystical, Relic, Artificial Being, Alien, Extradimensional]
Archetype 5, 2, 5 [Options: Shadow, Blaster, Armored, Robot/Cyborg, Wild Card]
Personality 6, 4, 8 [Options: Mischievous, Distant, Fast Talking, Alluring, Nurturing, Decisive]

Madame Liberty

Real Name: Marianne Leblanc, First Appearance: Covert Tactics Vol. 3 #1, December 1984
Background: Criminal, Power Source: Extradimensional, Archetype: Shadow
Personality: Decisive, Principles: Double Agent, Stealth

Status Dice: Green d8, Yellow d8, Red d10. Health: 28 [Green 28-22, Yellow 21-11, Red 10-1]
Qualities: Persuasion d10, Acrobatics d10, Stealth d12, Finesse d6, Master of Disguise d8
Powers: Suggestion d8, Intuition d8, Invisibility d8, Agility d6

Green Abilities:

• Saboteur [A]: Attack using Stealth. Remove one physical bonus or penalty, Hinder a target using your Min die, or maneuver to a new location in your environment.
• Precise Fighting [A]: Attack using Acrobatics. Defend using your Min die against all Attacks until your next turn.
• Evasive Action [R]: When you would take damage that would change your zone, Defend against that damage by rolling your single Acrobatics die.
• Principle of the Double Agent [A]: Overcome in a situation where you can draw upon resources from your other organization and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
• Principle of Stealth [A]: Overcome to infiltrate somewhere or avoid detection and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.

Yellow Abilities:

• Crossfire [A]: Attack multiple targets using Invisibility. Then, take irreducible damage equal to the number of targets hit.
• False Skin [A]: Attack using Suggestion. Use your Max die. Hinder that target with your Mid die. Hinder yourself with your Min die.
• Talk Down [A]: Attack or Overcome using Persuasion. Boost yourself using your Min die.

Red Abilities

• Last-Ditch Effort [A]: Make a basic action using Persuasion. Use your Max die. All other heroes who take the same basic action on their turn against the same target receive a Boost from your Mid+Min dice.
• Fall Back [A]: Hinder any number of close targets using Stealth. Use your Max die. End your turn anywhere else in the scene.

Out

• Boost an ally by rolling your single Suggestion die.

The new post-Sovereign age of Venture Comics launched with eight titles; some were listed as continuations and others started their numbering fresh, but seven of the eight were in practice newly-established settings in which the slate was cleared from the previous timeline, and the fractures and repairs were used to explain away any inconsistencies. A new writer, Harris Marvin, was brought on to restore one of Venture’s stalwart heroes, Madame Liberty, and he took the opportunity to develop a refresh for the entirety of Covert Tactics - the first issue of the comic launched with the characters already developed, and her backstory was unveiled over the course of the first twelve issues.

With the Nazis long gone, and the Soviets an increasingly fading power, Marvin decided to revise Madame Liberty’s origins and tie them into a new team of freedom fighters. Marianne Leblanc was revised to be a small-time French con artist who prided herself on conning criminals; she was in the middle of a heist of a rich collector when one of his recent acquisitions, a mysterious alien artifact, triggered a dimensional rupture that threw the building into chaos. Exposed to interdimensional energies that augmented her natural skills to super-physical levels, she developed the ability to project a psychic illusion around herself, appearing to be any person, fading from sight, or simply manipulating people into thinking her statements were reasonable.

Marianne, along with the others present, was quickly rounded up by the government and offered a choice - jail, or becoming part of a newly-founded covert ops unit that would deal with these sorts of problems. She stayed on the team for a time, growing disillusioned with their nationalism and cynical attitudes towards the people they theoretically protected. The breaking point was when she saved a young boy exposed to similar dimensional energies that left him with an intuitive psychic ability to create hypertechnology, only to learn that her agency, AEGIS, had intervened and taken him into custody to make weapons for them. Breaking young Abe Duncan out of prison, she took on the mantle of Madame Liberty,** secretly infiltrating AEGIS under a cover identity to use its resources while organizing her own team, Covert Tactics, to minimize the damage that they could cause.

Under Marvin’s watch, Abe Duncan became Kid Liberty once again, now an eighteen-year-old gadgeteer who had been working with Marianne for nearly five years. Irogane, Big Brain, and Half-Life rounded out the team, as three people exposed to or experimenting with dimensional pulses that Madame Liberty had saved and had chosen to join her. Pulsejet made an early appearance, but chose to trust the government and joined their sponsored team, the Vanguards.

The new Covert Tactics was much less trusting of authority than that of previous comics generations. AEGIS was written as seeing itself as the ‘good guys’, but being willing to sacrifice or manipulate civilians to develop the military technology they saw as necessary to prevent dimensional incursions, and many Pulse experiments proved to be under the purview of black ops government researchers. This meant that Covert Tactics were officially criminals, which often put them at odds with other superhero teams, many of which trusted their governments and societies without question.

Behind the Scenes

When I reached Extradimensional Criminal, I knew I was going to reboot either Hyperstar or Madame Liberty, and then Shadow popped up so here we are! Madame Liberty’s new expression of powers comes from the fact that Shapeshifting isn’t an option for her new Power Source or her old Archetype, which made me think about how the Iron Age might reframe it while staying symbolically accurate.

I knew I wanted to return to a Madame Liberty / Kid Liberty team-up for the Iron Age, if possible, and this seemed liked a good time, so Covert Tactics is our first reboot of the line. Madame Liberty is still one of the more-established heroes of the setting, but she hasn’t been active for over forty years any more.

[Chief_Lackey_Rich]

@FrivYeti

and the Soviets an increasingly fading power

In 1984? Not the one I lived through. Yeah, with post-collapse hindsight they were already hurting, but that wasn’t the West’s perspective at the time at all. Reagan was playing them up as an international menace with rhetoric we hadn’t seen since the 50s, SDI was all about protecting ourselves from impending Commie attacks, the US was funding “freedom fighters” all over the planet (including Afghanistan, which was still in a long grinding war with the USSR) to oppose communism, Red Dawn just hit theaters and Rocky IV was in production. The USSR was a cultural bogeyman in 1984, and that illusion would hold for several years yet.

Your writers could still have done everything described - there was also plenty of cynicism about the US government dishonesty already - but no part of their thinking would have involved “well, the Soviets are on their way out, who else can we use for guilt-free baddies?” in 1984. They’d have been taking bigger chances going with a strong antigovernment tone, but that would be partially vindicated pretty quickly as Iran-Contra started to come out.

That said, what did you use her retcon on? For once I can’t figure it out just from the character writeup. Getting out of practice already and it’s only been a month since I played…

[FrivYeti]

Huh, interesting. I’m too young to have been aware of politics in the mid-1980s, and my impression was always that the view of the Soviets as a primary threat started to crack around 1983 after Brezhnev died and the Soviet Union increasingly turned inwards, but I guess I was off by a few years.

Well, we’ll assume that this shift was done in part to keep Covert Tactics more internal, and maybe there was more Soviet stuff in the early years.

Madame Liberty’s retcon has been spent on her d10 Red die.

[Chief_Lackey_Rich]

The USSR got a lot less rhetorically aggressive post-Brezhnev (in part due to the two lame ducks between him and Gorbachev being half-dead before coming to power and all-dead within a year or so), but Reagan’s obsession with defeating communism did a lot to keep the Soviets prominently in the public discourse as handy all-purpose villains. The number of wargames dwelling on speculative NATO vs. Warsaw Pact in the decade was pretty remarkable, and you also had RPGs like Twilight 2000 (GDW, 1984), Year of the Phoenix and Freedom Fighters (both from FGU in 1986), and Price of Freedom, (WEG, 1986). It was really kind of batty how many “US occupied by the commies” games there were in just a couple of years, although whether that’s because of effective internal propaganda or because everyone wanted a piece of that Red Dawn money I couldn’t say.

[TakeWalker]

Yeah, at least up through the fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of the “reds” was rampant in the US. :B

[Godai]

And the fall of the Berlin Wall was perceived as less of “well, they aren’t that scary anymore” and more of “well they have a lot less control than we thought, which means more elements that can’t be planned for as rogue factions do their own thing.”

[Chief_Lackey_Rich]

Amusingly, today’s podcast spends some time on the subject of 80s comics using Mordengrad as a cognate for the USSR in a story about Olympics rivalry, along with discussion of just how Mordengrad was portrayed as a mashup of multiple USSR state cultures. Starts about 46 minutes in.

[FrivYeti]

The Randomizers:
Background 4, 7, 3 [Options: Performer, Military, Law Enforcement, Unremarkable, Dynasty]
Power Source 8, 8, 2 [Options: Training, Powered Suit, Tech Upgrades, Cosmos, Unknown]
Archetype 5, 2, 8 [Options: Shadow, Blaster, Armored, Flyer, Robot/Cyborg, Transporter]
Personality 2, 8, 9 [Options: Natural Leader, Fast Talking, Inquisitive, Alluring, Stoic, Naive]

Dawn Rider

Real Name: Ophelia Nelson, First Appearance: Twilight Carnival #1, December 1984
Background: Performer, Power Source: Training, Archetype: Transporter
Personality: Natural Leader, Principles: Family, Whispers

Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d12. Health: 32 [Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Ranged Combat d10, Banter d8, Acrobatics d8, Insight d8, Magical Apprentice d8
Powers: Soul Knives d10, Awareness d10, Barnum (Signature Vehicle) d10, Agility d8, Presence d6

Green Abilities:

• Go Get ‘Em [A]: Attack using Barnum. Either Hinder your target with your Min die or move them somewhere else in the scene.
• Lucky Girl [R]: When you are hit with an Attack, you may take 1 irreducible damage to have the attacker reroll their dice pool.
• Principle of Family [A]: Overcome in a situation where you have been given advice by your circus family and use your Max die. You and your allies gain a Hero Point.
• Principle of Whispers [A]: Overcome against a challenge that involves information that you have no real way of knowing and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.

Yellow Abilities:

• Mystical Senses [A]: Boost yourself using Awareness. That bonus is persistent and exclusive. Then, Attack using your Min die. You may use the bonus you just created on that Attack.
• Knife-Thrower [A]: Attack using Soul Knives. Use your Mid die to Attack one extra target for each bonus you have. Apply a different bonus to each Attack.
• Stage Fighting [A]: Attack using Soul Knives. Defend against all Attacks against you using your Min die until your next turn.

Red Abilities

• Sympathetic Understanding [A]: Attack using Awareness. Use your Max+Min dice. Ignore all penalties on this attack, ignore any Defend actions, and it cannot be affected by Reactions.
• Inspirational (I): When you use an ability action, you may also perform any one basic action using your Mid die on the same roll.

Out

• Boost an ally by rolling your single Insight die.

The second rebooted line in Venture’s post-Silence lineup featured the return of a comic that had been dormant since the fifties - Twilight Carnival! The comic inherited the writing team behind Dark Rivers, who chose to shift the focus a bit and unite a few of the more mystically-oriented Venture comics.

Twilight Carnival was an ensemble cast, but the team’s heart and soul was Dawn Rider. In the aftermath of the Sovereign, she had sought out Veilwalker, who had just graduated high school and was preparing for the world, and asked her to come and teach her magic. After some consideration, Karita had agreed, joining the Galleria circus alongside Ophelia and Frank. The team was rounded out by the circus’s electic cast of characters, including the mysterious old marksman who travelled with the circus, Bill Harrison - also known as the sasquatch hero Winter Wolf!

With Ophelia at the helm, the Twilight Carnival crew travelled around the post-Silence world, looking for magic that had slipped through the cracks and outcasts in need of a home. Together, they faced off against magical threats and saved innocent humans and monsters alike, and the Galleria Circus slowly became home to a growing community of magical beings, protected by the carnival’s leaders.

For her part, Ophelia’s magical training unlocked new secrets in the form of the souls that rested within her knives. They began to offer her quiet advice and suggestions, ranging from innocent to malicious depending on the knife and its nature. Sorting through this mystical information and learning to manage it became a major subplot of Twilight Circus, and a key part of Ophelia’s development as a hero.

Behind the Scenes

Our second reboot - a less naive, more thoughtful version of Dawn Rider leading a whole circus crew! This comic gets to blend some of the circus stories from previous ages with the outcast monster community from Cryptic Trails. I would read it.

Dawn Rider’s Principle of Whispers represents the whispers of her knives, whose mystic souls are starting to tell her things. Her Red attack typically uses Awareness+Insight to target someone who has been battered down and offers understanding and compassion, which might just knock them out of the fight as they realize they don’t have to (which in turn means it can’t really be used on anyone who would be thoroughly unaffected by her kindness!)

[Chief_Lackey_Rich]

@FrivYeti

Her Red attack typically uses Awareness+Insight to target someone who has been battered down and offers understanding and compassion, which might just knock them out of the fight as they realize they don’t have to (which in turn means it can’t really be used on anyone who would be thoroughly unaffected by her kindness!)

Interesting spin on that. Of course, in a pinch you could call it something else on the fly to use it against a target uninterested in being helped - maybe pooling in Magical Apprentice or Ranged Combat to have it reflect perceiving the critical weakness of a really rotten target and exploiting it.

@FrivYeti

Dawn Rider’s Principle of Whispers represents the whispers of her knives, whose mystic souls are starting to tell her things.

You know, with most people hearing your weapons talk to you is a bad sign. There’s the Pistol Packin’ Polaris Packrat (although in his case Smith and Wesson really can talk), that nagging pigsticker Stormbringer over in Elric, and (speaking of terrible 80s memories) the delusional Sledge Hammer, to name just a few examples.

[FrivYeti]

@Chief_Lackey_Rich

You know, with most people hearing your weapons talk to you is a bad sign. There’s the Pistol Packin’ Polaris Packrat (although in his case Smith and Wesson really can talk), that nagging pigsticker Stormbringer over in Elric, and (speaking of terrible 80s memories) the delusional Sledge Hammer , to name just a few examples.

Well, it wouldn’t be the Iron Age if we weren’t heading into darker, grittier stories about characters whose primary traits have previously been compassion and trust!

[Chief_Lackey_Rich]

True, and we’re early days yet. Give it a decade to get rolling and the hot new characters won’t ever have had any compassion or trust to start with. Just big guns, random swords, and pouches. So many pouches…

[FrivYeti]

The Randomizers:
Background 2, 8, 2 [Options: Criminal, Military, Struggling, Unremarkable, Adventurer]
Power Source 4, 4, 5 [Options: Experimentation, Mystical, Powered Suit, Radiation, Alien]
Archetype 2, 4, 8 [Options: Shadow, Marksman, Close Quarters Combatant, Flyer, Robot/Cyborg, Psychic]
Personality 5, 7, 10 [Options: Sarcastic, Stalwart, Alluring, Nurturing, Naive]

Skybreaker (II)

Real Name: Cooper Cullen, First Appearance: Spectacular Skybreaker #1, Dec 1984
Background: Unremarkable, Power Source: Mystical, Archetype: Marksman
Personality: Alluring, Principles: Discovery, Mask

Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d12. Health: 32 [Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Ranged Combat d10, Magical Lore d10, Alertness d10, Banter d8, Mild-Mannered Historian d8
Powers: Spear of Assal d10, Weather d10, Strength d8, Awareness d8, Presence d6

Green Abilities:

• Active Combat [A]: Attack using Alertness. Defend using your Min die.
• Throw the Spear [A]: Attack using the Spear of Assal. Ignore all penalties on this Attack, ignore any Defend actions, and it cannot be affected by Reactions.
• Principle of Discovery [A]: When you’re on the forefront in making a discovery or invention and take an Overcome action to further your knowledge, use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
• Principle of the Mask [A]: Overcome using knowledge from your civilian life and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.

Yellow Abilities:

• Magical Dabbler [A]: Attack or Overcome using Magical Lore on an environmental target, using your Max+Min dice. If you roll doubles, take a minor twist.
• Red Rage [A]: Attack using Ranged Combat. Use your Max die. If you roll doubles, use Max+Min instead.
• Winds of Change [A]: Boost or Hinder using Weather, and apply that mod to multiple nearby targets.
• Hero of Ulster [R]: When another hero in the Yellow or Red zone would take damage, you may redirect it to yourself and Defend against it by rolling your single Presence die.

Red Abilities

• The Final Cast [A]: Attack using the Spear of Assal and at least one bonus. Use your Max+Mid+Min dice. Destroy all of your bonuses, adding each of them to this Attack first, even if they are exclusive.
• Lead by Example [A]: Make a basic action using Banter. Use your Max die. All other heroes who take the same basic action on their turn against the same target receive a Boost from your Mid+Min dice.

Out

• Boost an ally by rolling your single Weather die.

Several eagle-eyed readers had noticed that two of Venture Comics’ most renowned heroes had been absent during the Sovereign of Secrets event. Both Flatfoot and Skybreaker had had their comics cancelled in the year before the event began, and failed to appear to fight against the end of the world largely due to lack of page space to explain what they were up to. In truth, the editorial staff had largely lost faith that their first grand Silver Age success was still applicable in the modern world, but they handed the property to a promising new writing team and gave them carte blanche to try something new, with the threat of cancellation if sales weren’t steady after twelve months.

Lead writer Charity Garrett decided to turn a problem into a solution. She pitched a comic in which Skybreaker had, in fact, been the first hero to fall to the Scion of Silence. After lifetimes of violence, he was lured by the promise of a simple life as mild-mannered historian Cooper Cullen, now married to Rhonda Rhodes with a toddler in their life, and with no spear, no adventures, and no threats to the planet. In the first issue of Spectacular Skybreaker, readers were introduced to Cullen having slipped through the cracks of the stories, still unaware of his true nature - until he instinctively intervened in a robbery, and the Spear of Assal returned to him. In a moment, his memories of his past lives were returned to him; at the end of the issue, he showed the Spear to Rhonda and she remembered their past lives as well.

Spectacular Skybreaker thus became a story of a reluctant hero, unable to set down his spear but trying to find a way to hold on to his simple civilian life. It would have been easy for Skybreaker to hide his spear and disappear from public life, but despite the pressures that his heroic career placed on him and his family, he couldn’t stand by with people in danger. The comic was one part heroic adventures and one part serious drama, and it gained an immediate following in the increasingly cynical world of the 1980s; something that delved into the difficulties of being a hero without simply declaring the process meaningless.

Behind the Scenes

Another age, another adjustment to Skybreaker! I’m not entirely sure about this one; I like a lot of it, but he’s definitely less robust as a defender. I do very much like the idea that he kind of wanted to take advantage of everything to retire, but he couldn’t pull it off, and that’s going to get him in a lot of trouble.

[Chief_Lackey_Rich]

@FrivYeti

I’m not entirely sure about this one; I like a lot of it, but he’s definitely less robust as a defender.

He lost his previous iteration’s damage reduction, but gained a reaction to defend an ally at risk to himself. Less personal durability, but probably better for a team.

[Godai]

@FrivYeti

In a moment, his memories of his past lives were returned to him;

[Chief_Lackey_Rich]

“I’m Miracleman!!”
“Don’t you mean Marvelman?”
“We don’t talk about that any more.”
“I bet you don’t, you shameless ripoff. Even Moore can’t change the fact that you plagiarized CC Beck.”

[FrivYeti]

The Randomizers:
Background 5, 4, 9 [Options: Military, Academic, Tragic, Medical, Interstellar]
Power Source 10, 5, 4 [Options: Experimentation, Mystical, Radiation, Tech Upgrades, Alien, Genius]
Archetype 7, 3, 5 [Options: Physical Powerhouse, Blaster, Armored, Flyer, Robot/Cyborg, Psychic]
Personality 6, 10, 6 [Options: Distant, Alluring, Nurturing, Cheerful]

Synthesis

Real Name: Zhola Pex, First Appearance: Earthwatch #70, Jan 1985
Background: Interstellar, Power Source: Genius, Archetype: Physical Powerhouse
Personality: Distant, Principles: Outsider, Lab

Status Dice: Green d10, Yellow d8, Red d8. Health: 32 [Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Conviction d12, Science d10, Close Combat d6, Deep Space Lore d6, Intergalactic Peacekeeper d8
Powers: Deduction d10, Strength d10, Inventions d8, Lightning Calculator d8, Size-Changing d6

Green Abilities

• Damage Resistant (I): Reduce any physical or energy damage you take by 1 while you are in the Green zone, 2 while in the Yellow zone, and 3 while in the Red zone.
• Just Punch It [A]: Attack using Strength and use your Max die.
• Principle of the Outsider [A]: Overcome a local problem using knowledge from your home and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
• Principle of the Lab [A]: Overcome while in a familiar workspace or when you have ample research time. Use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.

Yellow Abilities:

• Chemical Enhancements [A]: Boost yourself using Inventions. Use your Max die. That bonus is persistent and exclusive. Then Attack using your Min die.
• Turn the Tables [R]: When you are attacked, first roll your single Deduction die. Defend yourself with that roll. Then, Boost yourself using that roll.
• In Your Face [A]: Attack using Strength. The target of that Attack must take an Attack action against you as its next turn, if possible.

Red Abilities

• To The Edge (I): You have no limit on the amount of Reactions you can take. Each time you use a Reaction after the first one each turn, take 1 irreducible damage or take a minor twist.
• Unstable Strength [A]: Attack using Conviction. Use your Max+Mid+Min dice. Take a major twist.

Out

• Boost an ally by rolling your single Red status die.

In the aftermath of Sovereign of Secrets, Earthwatch was shaken and mourning. Each of its heroes had looked up to the Steward, and his loss affected them badly; there were also some legal issues in play from the point of view of Earth’s government, since the Steward had been the guarantor for the good behaviour of all three of the surviving heroes.

Two adjustments to the team were made, one local and one interstellar. To mollify the United Nations, Fission officially left the Vanguards, joining Earthwatch as the official human overseer for the project. At the same time, the Xur’Tani sent a new delegate to Earth to replace the Steward. Zhola Pex was a dedicated and determined intergalactic peacekeeper and scientific genius, and a former student of Mali Xur, who believed that she had developed a vaccine against the corrosive effects of Earth’s bacteria that had shortened her mentor’s life. Upon reaching Earth, and without informing her superiors, she tested her new serum on herself, deliberately infecting herself with Earth’s atmosphere in the hopes of gaining the Steward’s powers without the drawbacks, which she believed would allow her to better defend the planet and perhaps lead to the improvement of the Xur’Tani people.

Zhola’s experiment was a mixed success. While she had avoided Mali’s sickness, it required constant treatments to continue to stave it off, with adjustments being made as her strength waxed and waned. Concealing the experiments from both her superiors and her teammates, she joined Earthwatch as a dedicated and determined hero, willing to put herself on the line to the bitter end to defend the people of Earth and the home that her mentor had called his own. Emotionally, she found it difficult to integrate into the team she now lead, keeping her distance from them rather than forming the strong bonds the Steward had, but she was reliable and forthright in her mission.

Behind the Scenes

I knew that with the Steward gone, Earthwatch needed a new alien parole officer, but I wasn’t sure what they would look like until I hit Genius and Physical Powerhouse in close succession. So we get an alien scientist who is making… I’m going to say bad decisions? Probably bad decisions.

Zhola’s immense Conviction die means that as long as she’s driven and acting according to her beliefs she can toss out a pretty massive die, but when she’s uncertain or just sparring her confidence collapses and her die pool isn’t nearly so good. She has the same base power set as the Steward, but augmented by her chemical inventions rather than his technology and social graces.

[Chief_Lackey_Rich]

That’s very clever approach to a legacy Steward.

@FrivYeti

So we get an alien scientist who is making… I’m going to say bad decisions? Probably bad decisions.

She’s a scientist in a comic book. Bad decisions pretty much come with the territory.

Going to guess there’s eventually a story where she accidentally infects a fellow Xur’Tani who encounters her, and she winds up having to keep them from going home and spreading the disease, possibly resulting a very bitter villain (or perhaps antihero).

And/or her superiors find out what she’s done, and one of them turns out to be a power-hungry eugenicist/warmonger sort who decides the best thing to do is to mass-produce the vaccine (hopefully improving on it with time) and then deliberately infect the whole Xur’Tani population so they can all be super and conquer the galaxy or something. Get a whole Viltrumite vibe going ala Invincible. That could become a super dark story with a really grand scope that eventually changes all the cosmic stuff going forward. Or it could be disposed of in an issue by inventing some uber-vaccine that removes both the germs and the powers. But only works on folks with short exposure times, so Synthesis doesn’t get fixed in the process and you can have some Xur’Tani who deliberately avoid permanent treatment and turn into your typical Kryptonian survivor villain type. For a real nod and wink, have them imprisoned in a Phantom Zone style pocket dimension - or a corner of the Realm of Discord.

Love the costume, by the way. You’re doing great with that software.

[FrivYeti]

@Chief_Lackey_Rich

Going to guess there’s eventually a story where she accidentally infects a fellow Xur’Tani who encounters her, and she winds up having to keep them from going home and spreading the disease, possibly resulting a very bitter villain (or perhaps antihero).

And/or her superiors find out what she’s done, and one of them turns out to be a power-hungry eugenicist/warmonger sort who decides the best thing to do is to mass-produce the vaccine (hopefully improving on it with time) and then deliberately infect the whole Xur’Tani population so they can all be super and conquer the galaxy or something. Get a whole Viltrumite vibe going ala Invincible. That could become a super dark story with a really grand scope that eventually changes all the cosmic stuff going forward. Or it could be disposed of in an issue by inventing some uber-vaccine that removes both the germs and the powers. But only works on folks with short exposure times, so Synthesis doesn’t get fixed in the process and you can have some Xur’Tani who deliberately avoid permanent treatment and turn into your typical Kryptonian survivor villain type. For a real nod and wink, have them imprisoned in a Phantom Zone style pocket dimension - or a corner of the Realm of Discord.

Without spoiling anything upcoming, at least one of these things is in the pipelines for when we hit the first batch of Iron Age villains in a couple weeks!

And thank you - Hero Forge is a very robust program, although I’m sad that they’ve adjusted it to have their social media links where I used to do screencaps from. Had to change the screenshot system, which means when I aggregate this stuff later I’m going to have to adjust a lot of dimensions.

[FrivYeti]

The Randomizers:
Background 10, 8, 10 [Options: Struggling, Unremarkable, Exile, Former Villain]
Power Source 5, 6, 8 [Options: Mystical, Nature, Powered Suit, Supernatural, Cursed, Alien]
Archetype 9, 10, 2 [Options: Shadow, Elemental Manipulator, Robot/Cyborg, Sorcerer, Psychic, Divided]
Personality 10, 9, 1 [Options: Lone Wolf, Inquisitive, Alluring, Stoic, Jaded]

The Drifter

Real Name: Zeke Jones, First Appearance: Broken Mirrors #1, April 1985
Background: Unremarkable, Power Source: Supernatural, Archetype: Sorcerer
Personality: Inquisitive, Principles: Compassion, Future

Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10. Health: 30 [Green 30-23, Yellow 22-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Insight d10, Stealth d8, Investigation d8, Otherworldly Lore d8, Friendly Face d8
Powers: Precognition d10, Presence d10, Deduction d10, Teleportation d10, Telekinesis d6

Green Abilities:

• Finger on the Scales [A]: Hinder using Precognition. Use your Max die. If you roll doubles, also Attack using your Mid die.
• Disorient [A]: Attack multiple targets using Teleportation, applying your Min die against each.
• Principle of Compassion [A]: Overcome to connect with an individual on a personal level and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
• Principle of the Future [A]: Overcome using your knowledge of possible futures and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.

Yellow Abilities:

• Level the Playing Field [A]: Boost or Hinder using Precognition, and apply that mod to multiple close targets.
• Words of Wisdom [A]: Boost an ally using Presence. You and nearby heroes in the Yellow and Red zones Recover Health equal to your Min die.
• Remove the Problem [A]: Destroy one d6 or d8 minion. Roll that minion’s die as an Attack against another target.

Red Abilities

• Supporting Cast [A]: Boost another hero using Precognition. If that hero has already acted for the turn, use your Max die, and that hero loses health equal to your Min die. That hero acts next in the turn order.
• Lend A Hand [A]: Hinder using Insight. Use your Max+Min dice. Boost yourself or an ally with your Mid die.
• Rewrite the Story (I): At the start of your turn, change any penalty into a bonus.

Out

• Choose an ally. Until your next turn, that ally may reroll one of their dice by using a Reaction.

One surprise for the editors of Venture Comics in the aftermath of the Sovereign of Secrets event was a deluge of letters asking questions not about the new reboot, but about the worlds that had been created by the Scion’s wishcraft. People were interested in how those stories might have gone, what they said about the heroes, and what other worlds had been wished for. Never one to pass up an opportunity, chief editor H.R. Randall revised the plan for Venture Comics’ eighth publication slot to focus on limited-run series as in the later 70s, and replaced it with a new comic line: Broken Mirrors. The premise of the comic was that it would feature a variety of worlds that might have been, pocket existences created by the Sovereign and populated by shadows of the heroes that readers were familiar with, with the writing team spending anywhere from three to six issues in a particular world before moving on to the next, looking at what challenge the Scion had introduced to cause the world to fail. Some of them would overcome it, others would have dark ends.

Looking for a way to link these stories to the broader setting and to allow for most worlds to survive without undermining the Scion’s threat, the Broken Mirrors team decided that a hero should be present to guide these shadows to survival. And what better hero than the one known for hiding in the background and subtly manipulating events to help people?

The result was the Drifter’s first ongoing series. After centuries of drifting along, Zeke Jones had finally found a way to both experience the manyfold joys of life, and to save millions of lives: using his abilities to slip between the realms crafted by the Scion’s wishcraft, inserting himself into tales that were spiralling into darkness, and through deft action, helping the heroes in these worlds save themselves. Each of the Broken Mirrors looked into a world built on the hopes or fears of a Venture Comics character, reviving old enemies or taking heroes in new directions, and then moving on to a new world. For the moment, at least, none of these settings were revisited once they had appeared, and their nature as a dreamscape meant that the details didn’t quite have to line up. Usually, the Drifter would entirely fail to appear in the first issue of each story, which established the baseline, before he slipped into the narrative early in the second issue and began helping. He would muse on the lessons learned from the world, and mourn if he failed to pull it back from the brink, and then move on to the next story.

Behind the Scenes

I really wanted my own Marvel What If, but I also wanted it to have a narrator, so our comedy hero gets turned into the Watcher and does something quite different. Broken Mirrors is coming out a few years before Sentinel Comics gets in the game with their Disparation stories, but it’s a few years later than when Marvel started this type of thing back in the real world so I’m okay with Venture Comics being first out of the gate this once.

Zeke mostly boosts and hinders in order to help other people accomplish their goals, but he can just pull a minion right out of the story if need be, or step in to offer advice or support. What he very deliberately doesn’t have are any powerful attacks, including the messy one his Silver Age incarnation sometimes used in the Red zone. As the narrator, he’s more rigid about sticking to the background.

And this mostly wraps up the string of reboot heroes, I think; next week, we can get started on the increasingly grim heroes of the mid-to-late 80s before we hit the 90s and go X-TREME!

[Chief_Lackey_Rich]

@FrivYeti

Broken Mirrors is coming out a few years before Sentinel Comics gets in the game with their Disparation stories, but it’s a few years later than when Marvel started this type of thing back in the real world so I’m okay with Venture Comics being first out of the gate this once.

At the same time, DC had been doing “imaginary stories” regularly for decades. Those were effectively prototypes of the What If?/Elseworlds/Disparity concept, and a rare few of them even made it into more than one issue due to reader demand granting them a sequel story. They were still very informal, ran irregularly, and never had their own title, but those were still the root of things like broken Mirrors. Presumably some rough cognate of DC in the Sentinel Comics universe did the same thing early as well.

Is that a soda glass he’s holding? Maybe one of those free handout Coca-Cola ones from McDonalds? He must have missed the 1985 Camp Snoopy set, they were more cylindrical than the classic design.