DP7 and Star Brand are still some of my favorite work out of Shooter’s Marvel days. The rest, maybe not quite so much, but I gave all of them a shot and some (Spitfire, Hazzard) just plain died before they’d outstayed their welcome.
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That’s a really neat concept, and I can see where it’d be a hit in the 90s even post-boom. Nifty model, too. Principle of the Detective is the only thing that seems out of place to me, I don’t think I grok what it represents for…um, whatever the right pronoun is? Raw curiosity making Wildstyle poke a metaphorical nose into everything?
The last time I actually played Champions one of our D-list foes was a near-duplicate of her called the Cable Guy, right down to the former soldier in alien power suit thing. What If Razorline Went Bad? Dun-dun-dun!
The answer is that she’d still be kind of boring. 
Ye gods, that trope got used so often back then. Not 100% sure it still isn’t pretty common, but I don’t keep up with modern books like I once did.
Dig his abilities, very flavorful.
Pronouns: In the 90s, Wildstyle would use it/its pronouns. I am going to go ahead and declare that by the 2000s they’re using they/them pronouns instead, but early on their personhood is a bit fragile (and while they/them was in use to refer to specific non-gendered people in the 80s and 90s, it wasn’t mainstream yet.)
And yes: the idea was supposed to be that Wildstyle’s artistic eye lets it spot when there’s a piece being held back. On reflection, I’m not sure that Detective is quite the right spot for that, and I may have to create a new principle instead. Will think about it.
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Okay, a rollerblading graffiti robot is pure genius. 
Absolutely the perfect character for this line.
That said, I wanna know more about Heretic. 
That is precisely the kind of character I would have loved during my edgy phase. Which I will not claim has ended.
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Post a link to the model, I’ll take a crack at it. I’ve spent way too many hours in Hero Forge to pass a chance at making your vision come true.
At the moment, you know precisely as much as I do! But I’ll make a note to potentially expand on Heretic in the future, but given that his thing is not being popular, I suspect he may prove a disappointment. 
Thanks, and good luck! The link is:
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Here you go. Forehead “gem horn”, twisted and tilted to fill the triangle void. Color as desired. Enjoy!
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Maybe their OP power set will get passed on to some legacy hero after a suitably heroic self-sacrifice, hopefully being modified to be more practical for storytelling in the process. “Heretic” and the time period kind of suggests someone with (say) powers drawn from a divine entity that’s bound against its will. If the binding was broken or modified and reassigned on his death the new mortal “owner” might be on better terms with their power source, but require more consent to use it at full potency - a partnership rather than a master-servant relationship? Having a manifested supernatural entity “pet” that doesn’t fit in some folks’ belief systems would probably still qualify for the “Heretic” supranym.
Heck, maybe he doesn’t even need to die, just do something suitably heroic and have the binding change so he becomes Heretic Redeemed or something. Pretty much how the Giant Girl webcomic concluded its last big story arc, with her semi-involuntary mystic power source turning out to be a lot cooler about things than she expected. A few extra years in the lamp isn’t a big deal when you’re immortal.
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Amazing! I will update the smaller image above momentarily. Thank you.
It is possible that while Heretic was given his powers by the Sovereign of Secrets, that’s not who is powering him now. Actually, that’s not just possible, it’s necessary, because with the Sovereign sealed away no one who was getting powers from them still is, a fact that the writers of Remnants just might not have remembered.
pondering There might be something there. If a good spot opens up in the last five heroes (or in the Diamond Age) I will consider it.
It would be a good Plutonium Age candidate if I were writing heroes and villains for the Plutonium Age.
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The Randomizers:
Background 7, 9, 10 [Options: Law Enforcement, Tragic, Unremarkable, Created, Anachronistic, Otherworldly]
Power Source 7, 3, 6 [Options: Genetic, Nature, Relic, Radiation, Tech Upgrades, Cursed]
Archetype 8, 2, 5 [Options: Shadow, Blaster, Armored, Flyer, Robot/Cyborg, Transporter]
Personality 7, 3, 6 [Options: Impulsive, Distant, Stalwart, Inquisitive, Alluring, Jovial]
Flatfoot (III)
Real Name: Johnny Law, First Appearance: Company Town (Vol. 2) #81, Sep 1995
Background: Anachronistic, Power Source: Tech Upgrades, Archetype: Robot/Cyborg
Personality: Jovial, Principles: Destiny, Indestructible
Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10. Health: 32 [Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Close Combat d10, Technology d10, Investigation d10, Criminal Underworld d8, Pillar of the Community d8
Powers: Strength d10, Lightning Calculator d8, Vitality d8, Presence d6
Green Abilities:
- Detainment [A]: Boost using Strength, assigning your Min, Mid, and Max dice to three different bonuses, one of which must be given to an enemy.
- Wire Brain [A]: Boost yourself using Lightning Calculator. That bonus is persistent and exclusive.
- Metal Flesh (I): Reduce the amount of physical damage taken by 1 while you are in the Green zone, 2 while in the Yellow zone, and 3 while in the Red zone.
- Principle of Destiny [A]: Overcome a situation directly connected to your destiny and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
- Principle of the Indestructible [A]: Overcome in a situation where you charge headlong into danger and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
Yellow Abilities:
- Whirlwind Strike [A]: Attack multiple targets using Strength, using your Min die against each.
- The Long Arm of the Law [A]: Attack using Strength, with a bonus equal to the number of bonuses you currently have.
- Community Leader [R]: When Attacked, treat the amount of damage you take as a Boost action for yourself.
Red Abilities
- Strain (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.
- Servitor Servos [R]: When an opponent Attacks, you may become the target of that Attack and Defend by rolling your single Technology die.
- Rapid Repairs [A]: Hinder yourself using Vitality. Use your Min die. Recover health equal to your Max+Mid dice.
Out
- Defend an ally by rolling your single Technology die.
After twelve years of notable absence, one of Venture Comics’ most venerable heroes returned to the pages of Company Town, the comic that had created him, in 1995. The move to revive Flatfoot was heavily targeted. The collapse of the speculator market was ravaging Venture Comics, with Broken Mirrors and Remnants already cancelled and more potential losses on the horizon. Company Town was one of the titles under threat, and its writers decided that they needed to refresh the storyline if they wanted Paradox to endure. They embarked on a two-year plan to revive the series in time for its one hundredth issue, and they kicked things off with the return of the Fearless Flatfoot.
Paradox had made what seemed like progress fighting her dark future, but events kept shifting back towards the outcomes she was trying to avoid, and she knew that there was one key outcome missing - Flatfoot. In her timeline, the hero had been rebuilt after years of silence and fought to save Ferristown, facing off against the Man in a grand battle in the year 2012 that devastated the city and paved the way for Ferris’s total conquest. To forestall this, Paradox had been searching for the original lab in which Flatfoot had been created. She succeeded in finding the broken-down robot, who had been taken out by the Table years before, as well as his original lab. Combining her own future technological knowledge with the memory core of the second Flatfoot and the archaic chassis of the first one, she activated the police robot a few years early, loading knowledge of her time period and his role in it into him.
The newly-activated Flatfoot was a bit of a mess. Built heavily on outdated technology, he had the memories of three different iterations in his head, combined with a desire to protect his community and the knowledge of the dark fate his efforts would lead to. He decided to reveal himself and take a different place, working to reclaim the Ferristown police from Ferris’s clutches, in the hopes of building a better future. At the same time, he could see how his own actions, like Paradox’s, seemed to be leading towards the very future he was trying to prevent, and he became focused on calculating a way to evade his destiny and adjust the future.
Many readers found Flatfoot’s presence as a supporting character to be extremely odd, but at the same time, he was a comforting figure at the tail end of the Iron Age - a robotic man literally from a bygone era, trying to bring Silver Age confidence and goodhearted cheer into a dark, grim city, providing emotional support to Paradox as he fought in the light, and secretly passing her information to continue her campaign in the shadow. Over the next twenty issues, Company Town often alternated which of the two was the lead and which was in the background, weaving them together without ever quite making them a team. Flatfoot also reached out to his old allies in Covert Tactics and the Champions of Truth, getting help where needed and lending a hand.
Behind the Scenes
Flatfoot Version 3 is here!
Anachronistic is getting a bit of weird use here, but I like it. This is a hero that represents the other half of the 90s - writers trying to bring back the heroes that they remember from thirty years earlier, updating them a bit for the modern era but keeping them as much as possible as they were back then. There’s more of this in the early 2000s, but it started around here, and Flatfoot is the perfect example.
Flatfoot has an absolutely silly combo here that probably doesn’t come up super-often, but is going to be devastating in high-stakes combats. He can take himself down to Red, and then any time an enemy attacks he takes 1 damage to redirect it to himself and Defend, and if enough damage gets through he can take 1 more damage to turn it into a Boost. Then on his turn he heals himself back up. On top of that, all those boosts charge up his main attack. The only drawback is that his innate defense + Red defense means that there’s a good chance that in Red not many attacks are getting through enough for turning them into Boosts to be worth it!
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Nice to see him back again. One good thing about robot characters, they can always make a comeback.
IME his big combo (and variations of it) often run so tight on Red zone Health that they wind up taking twists with extra uses of the Strain reaction rather than the 1 irreducible damage to reduce the chances of going Out if you whiff the defense roll, especially here where you’ve only got innate damage reduction from physical damage. Surprising how often one or two points means everything. Just having the option is a nice perk.
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Yeah - Flatfoot has the extra advantage that he can take an action to heal himself back up, although that might pull him out of Red unless the scene itself is about to tick over, but I can definitely see some twists where getting in the way to protect someone pushes him towards his destiny, or causes some kind of ‘damage’ that’s not health-related as an Indestructible twist.
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Yeah, characters with Major Regen frequently pogo in and out of their personal Red zone during a scene. I think the record I’ve seen was climbing out of Red six times in one scene, although that was with assists from another hero using Give Time so they had extra turns to work with. Like a bloody weeble, I tell you.
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Yep! The silliest version of that I designed was a character who used the Accident reaction to boost whenever they changed personal zones, and then only had energy recovery in Red through the inherent that lets you prevent the damage, Recover, and boost yourself when they took that damage, plus the Elemental Manipulator power that did Max die self-damage.
So they would attack and take damage, causing them to drop to Red and Boost, then attack, heal to Yellow and Boost twice, and so on. It worked really well unless someone hit them very hard while they were in Red.
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The Randomizers:
Background 7, 10, 7 [Options: Law Enforcement, Unremarkable, Interstellar, Anachronistic]
Power Source 4, 6, 6 [Options: Experimentation, Nature, Tech Upgrades, Artificial Being, Cosmos]
Archetype 10, 4, 6 [Options: Marksman, Close Quarters, Robot/Cyborg, Minion-Maker, Form-Changer]
Personality 6, 10, 7 [Options: Distant, Stalwart, Alluring, Analytical, Cheerful, Naive]
Protean
Real Name: Wendy Delaney, First Appearance: Protean #1, February 1998
Background: Unremarkable, Power Source: Cosmos, Archetype: Form-Changer
Personality: Analytical, Principles: Ambition, Double Agent
Status Dice: Green d10, Yellow d8, Red d8. Health: 28 [Green 28-23, Yellow 22-11, Red 10-1]
Qualities: Science d10, Close Combat d10, Banter d8, Stealth d8, Walking Encyclopedia d8
Powers: Intuition d10, Shapeshifting d10, Inventions d8, Vitality d8
Green Abilities:
- Change Forms [A]: Take a basic action using Shapeshifting, then switch to any available form.
- Hit and Run [A]: Attack using Shapeshifting and use your Max die. Then change to any available form.
- Principle of Ambition [A]: Overcome a situation where someone else has given you a bonus from a Boost and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
- Principle of the Double Agent [A]: Overcome in a situation where you can draw upon resources from your secret allies and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
Green Form: Little Buddy [Intuition d10, Shapeshifting d10, Agility d8, Wall-Crawling d8]
- Squirm [A]: Boost or Overcome using Intuition. Use your Max die.
Green Form: Big Buddy [Intuition d10, Strength d10, Shapeshifting d8, Vitality d8]
- Sturdy [A]: 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.
Yellow Abilities:
- Fluid Form [A]: Attack using Shapeshifting. Boost all nearby heroes taking Attack or Overcome actions using your Mid die until your next turn.
- Smart Moves [A]: Boost or Hinder using Intuition and apply that mod to multiple close targets.
Yellow Form: Winged Buddy [Flight d12, Intuition d10, Shapeshifting d10, Speed d8]
- Dive Bomb [A]: Attack using Flight. Defend against all attacks until your next turn with your Min die.
Red Abilities
- Science Buddy [A]: Overcome using Science. Use your Max+Min dice.
- Regeneration [A]: Hinder yourself using Shapeshifting. Use your Min die. Recover Health equal to your Max+Mid dice.
- Emergency Change [R]: When hit with an Attack, change to any form before resolving the Attack. Take a minor twist.
Out
- Hinder an opponent by rolling your single Intuition die.
As Venture Comics struggled to rebuild in the wake of the speculator market collapse, a careful eye was cast over what was succeeding and what wasn’t. Bringing back Flatfoot and integrating the Rogue Agents had saved Company Town, but of the comics introduced in the late 80s and early 90s, the only other title still running was Fish out of Water, and it was beginning to show its age as the premise of ‘learning about the universe’ clashed with ‘had over sixty issues already’. In preparation for adjusting that title, a decision was reached to launch a new teen-focused comic; with Veilwalker, Dawn Rider, and Kid Liberty all approaching their early 20s, there weren’t any major youth heroes left. The result was Protean.
Wendy Delaney was a high school science geek, a genius chemist and witty poet from a poor and neglectful family on the fringes of her school’s social circles. After she humiliated a fellow student named Carlie, calling her out for bullying and hitting several of her vulnerable emotional points, Carlie snuck into Wendy’s lab space and added a random mixture of chemicals to her big science fair project, which was meant to develop a process to speed organic growth by drawing in extra-dimensional energies. Carlie wanted to make Wendy feel like a failure, but what she didn’t realize was that the chemicals Wendy was working with were volatile. At the science fair, as Wendy put the last of her intended formula into the mixture, it reacted with Carlie’s sabotage and exploded in Wendy’s face, putting her in the hospital.
Wendy woke up with a dimensionally unstable body, which the doctors mistook for permanent nerve damage, and was home from school for a month. With medical experts telling her that she would never fully recover, she decided to experiment on herself, and soon developed a variety of serums that could temporarily stabilize her body into various shapes, either faking normality or transforming entirely into alien monsters. Deciding to make the best of the situation and use her newfound powers to both do good and test her inventions, she secretly became the superhero Protean, using her powers to protect her home from criminals and aliens draw by the dimensional eruption.
Wendy also had to deal with Carlie. The guilt-stricken teen had no idea that Wendy had gained powers, and instead blamed herself for almost killing the girl. She confessed to Wendy almost immediately, and began actively and aggressively trying to include her in social activities and school events, even securing Wendy an internship at her father’s tech company. Wendy had mixed feelings about her new social life, especially since it was eating into her heroing time, but she didn’t need to sleep any more so she found ways to make it work.
Protean was an unusual teen hero; while she had a lot of the classic ‘nerd chic’, she was also a goal-focused person with a hard-edged attitude, accompanied by a group of friends who had, until recently, been her bullies. It was a nerd power fantasy that went over well with Venture Comics readers, and Protean was a smash hit that helped the company pull out of its spiral and avoid bankruptcy.
Behind the Scenes
This sort of started as ‘a bit Spider-Man’ and then veered wildly in a different direction. We’re short on teen heroes again, and a teen science hero is something that Venture hasn’t had since Kid Liberty, so here’s one! The rest of it came from “what if you were a double agent for the popular kids” and just kind of got of control from there.
Wendy thinks she knows it all, but she’s still out of her depth in dangerous situations, and she’s got a long way to go to be one of the world’s top heroes. But she’s definitely on the path.
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Interesting approach to that principle.
Form-Changer’s Yellow form gets two of its dice bumped up by one step as well as being able to swap things around like in Green. So a bit more potent than written ATM.
Certainly sounds like a plausibly-popular teen high-school hero in the tradition of Moon Girl, Static, and the modern Ms. Marvel. What grade is she in, junior? Senior? Do any of her serums let her adopt an adult appearance? That would be an interesting nod to the Marvel Family, Firestorm (well, half of him, anyway) and Malibu’s Prime.
Have to wonder if the tech company will turn out to actually be something sinister, or wind up getting targeted for a corporate takeover or simple robbery by villains.
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Oh, yeah! I totally forgot about that. Fixed.
I had her at about 16 in my mind, so probably still a junior.
As written, her serum forms normally don’t let her adopt a human-like appearance, although her player could probably spend a hero point to do it for a special issue. Her towering form could be mistaken for an adult alien, though, and I bet she uses it that way a lot of the time to get taken seriously.
When I get to Protean’s villain, I’ll probably find out what the deal with the tech company is! The obvious lean is for it to be secretly evil, in a sort of Norman Osborne situation, but it might go the opposite route and be a generally well-meaning company that gets attacked by villains a lot. I can’t imagine it’s not involved heavily in her superhero life.
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What’s really interesting about the image is that we don’t often see a character’s powers represented that way!
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The Randomizers:
Background 3, 9, 1 [Options: Blank Slate, Performer, Military, Tragic, Unremarkable, Adventurer]
Power Source 3, 3, 7 [Options: Genetic, Nature, Relic, Tech Upgrades, Cursed]
Archetype 7, 6, 1 [Options: Speedster, Close Quarters, Armored, Flyer, Transporter]
Personality 10, 5, 6 [Options: Sarcastic, Distant, Alluring, Stoic, Jovial, Cheerful]
Solace
Real Name: Rhonda Rhodes, First Appearance: (as Solace) Spectacular Skybreaker #159, May 1999
Background: Adventurer, Power Source: Cursed, Archetype: Transporter
Personality: Stoic, Principles: Compassion, History
Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10. Health: 32 [Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: History d10, Alertness d10, Imposing d6, Stealth d8, Fae-Touched d8
Powers: Precognition d12, Sonic d8, Intangibility d8, Vitality d8, Teleportation d6
Green Abilities:
- Boon and Bane (I): Whenever you roll a die’s max value, treat that value as 1 higher. When you roll a 1 on a die, treat that die as if it had rolled a 0.
- Banshee’s Cry [A]: Attack using Sonic. Either Hinder your target with your Min die or move them somewhere else in the scene.
- Dark Prophecy [A]: Attack using Precognition. Defend against all Attacks against you using your Min die until your next turn.
- 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 History [A]: Overcome a situation involving archaeology, history, or puzzle-solving and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
Yellow Abilities:
- Measure for Measure (I): When you would take sonic damage, you may Recover that amount of Health instead.
- Siren Song [A]: Boost all nearby allies using Sonic. Use your Max+Mid dice. Hinder yourself with your Min die.
- Ghostly Mien [R]: When you are hit with an Attack, you may take 1 irreducible damage to have the attacker reroll their dice pool.
Red Abilities
- Death Curse [A]: Attack using Precognition. Use your Max+Mid+Min dice. Take a major twist.
- Historical Expert [A]: Overcome using History. Use your Max+Min dice.
Out
- Defend an ally by rolling your single Precognition die.
In 1998, Charity Garrett completed a thirteen-year run on Spectacular Skybreaker, handing writing duties over to a new author, Redmond Hayes. Hayes promised fans that while he had big plans for the title, he didn’t intend to undo Garrett’s impressive work, and his first year seemed to support that, but fans were shocked and briefly enraged when an early 1999 story featured Skybreaker’s ancient enemy the Huntsman appearing to kill his wife, Rhonda Rhodes, as she tried to protect their young son.
Fortunately for Hayes’ mailbox, he didn’t plan for the death to be real. It was revealed a month later that Rhonda’s apparent death was a trick played on Cooper by Nabote, an Unseelie queen, who had stolen his wife away in the belief that they could turn her against her. Rhonda was bombarded with illusions that her husband had abandoned her and her son was dead, and transformed into a banshee, then sent back to wreck vengeance on Skybreaker… only for her to immediately tell him everything that had happened, and exactly where Nabote could be found. As it transpired, a foundation of communication and love rendered all of the fae court’s tricks meaningless. The furious hero, with Rhonda accompanying him, laid waste to the queen’s domain and cast her out.
But there was an unexpected side effect - Rhonda’s transformation did not reverse itself. The Banshee’s Curse upon her would remain until such time as her husband’s death, and as she didn’t intend for him to die, she was simply going to have to get used to it. As the hero Solace, Rhonda began to join Skybreaker in his adventures, the two of them fighting to build a safe world for their son.
Fan reactions to Solace were mixed. On the one hand, it took a piece of the quiet civilian life that Cooper had built away from him, reducing the domesticity that he longed for. On the other, a happily-married superhero couple was rare, and Solace’s determination to use her dark prophetic gifts to help others gave an excuse for the pair to be able to find supervillain plots and prevent them. But as a gimmick, it bolstered sales, and soon Skybreaker and Solace were an accepted part of the Venture canon.
Behind the Scenes
I wasn’t planning to do this; I had picked up Adventurer, got History, noted that I had to make sure not to make it Skybreaker, and then the idea popped into my head… what if it’s his wife?
So here we go! It’s another classic comics trope - civilian love interest gains superpowers, becomes hero in their own right. And this one worked out pretty well, despite the best efforts of the bad guys, so I’m cool with it.
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Classic trope for sure, although a bit rare to see it last for long before the SO loses their powers for some random reason. Lois has probably gotten superpowers more often than Jimmy over the years but they never stick for long.
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