I was thinking of Snowflame, and was shaken to discover that he’s only been in a total of three storylines in all of DC’s comics history, and died in two of them!
So yeah, there might be a connection there. Probably Starhound only appeared maybe four times across the nine years of his initial existence, plus one zombie appearance, and the zombie appearance almost certainly included some kind of reference to the “starpoon” that became memetic for a bit.
The whole New Guardians book he originally comes from was a dumpster fire of terrible ideas. Snowy gets most of the attention when it comes to memes, but he’s by no means the most absurd, awkward, or ill-considered character in the series, and the entire meta-plot seems like the fever dream of a demented eugenicist.
The Randomizers:
Background 7, 10, 2 [Options: Criminal, Law Enforcement, Tragic, Unremarkable, Adventurer, Anachronistic]
Power Source 4, 1, 3 [Options: Accident, Genetic, Experimentation, Mystical, Relic]
Archetype 8, 5, 8 [Options: Blaster, Flyer, Transporter, Form-Changer, Reality Shaper]
Personality 8, 5, 3 [Options: Impulsive, Sarcastic, Fast Talking, Stoic, Analytic]
Thelema
Real Name: Niamh O’Clery, First Appearance: Hidden Champions #103, November 1978
Background: Anachronistic, Power Source: Experimentation, Archetype: Reality Shaper
Personality: Impulsive, Principles: Immortality, History
Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10. Health: 32 [Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Fitness d10, Conviction d10, Magical Lore d12, Initiate of the Mysteries d8
Powers: Stone d10, Radiant d8, Precognition d6
Green Abilities:
Yellow Abilities:
Red Abilities
Out
In the late 1970s, a minor power struggle was underway in Venture Comics. On one side was the ‘Champions’ editorial desk, which held two of the company’s most popular comics (Celestial Travellers and Hidden Champions) but who had lost the rest of their titles to poor sales and editorial interference. On the other side was the ‘Mystical’ editorial desk, which was growing in popularity as it presented stranger tales (meanwhile, the ‘Super-Science’ editorial desk was off doing its own thing, largely ignoring the other two entirely.) The Champions desk, determined to wrest back a measure of control over the magical heroes they had created, deliberately set about creating a new magical hero for their newest title, one who would give them the opportunity to outflank their rivals and redirect what they saw as a doomed direction for Venture’s magical heroes.
The result was Thelema. Introduced in the pages of Hidden Champions in 1978, Niamh O’Clery was a skilled alchemist from the early 1200s, who had developed a formula for immortality. As angry villagers arrived to try her for witchcraft, she took the formula herself and sank into the earth, vanishing from history… until the Animaster tried to reproduce her formula as part of his latest plot, and Wonderer assembled a team to fight him. To the djinn’s surprise, one of the heroes his magic summoned forth was Niamh herself, pulled from her slumber beneath the earth with her formula having spent centuries perfecting itself within her. She named herself Thelema, and set about helping the heroes stop the villain would would pervert her research to his vile ends.
The Thelema/Animaster two-parter proved to be very popular, and the Champions desk successfully petitioned for her to be given a shot at a solo title, which debuted in June 1979. The title promised the sort of straightforward magical adventures that had been lacking from Dark Rivers or Liberty’s Dream, while Thelema seeking to perfect her own magical arts while stopping other villains who would use dark magic for their own ends.
Ultimately, although the title was moderately successful at first, the squabbling between desks was what killed Thelema. Villains and even heroes appeared in the comic who were in the middle of other stories under the Mystical purview, and instead of drawing readers from the highly popular Into the Green or Dark Rivers, these contradictions turned them away. The Mystical desk blamed sales slumps for Cryptic Trails on the marketing push for Thelema, creating a fight across the letters pages of several books, and sales dropped further.
Ultimately, Thelema was cancelled at Issue #28, and replaced by the Penance limited series, under the control of the Mystical desk. The success of that series was the last nail in the coffin of the two desks’ struggles, and the Mystical desk was given full control over the major storyline that would end the Bronze Age; World of Wonders would feature Thelema’s death at the hands of the Scion of Silence (who reshaped reality to remove her invulnerability), which infuriated her few remaining fans but would not be undone after the Scion’s defeat.
Behind the Scenes
Technically, Thelema was not an ancient tradition, but Crowley claimed an ancient lineage and someone didn’t do the research.
Narratively, Thelema gets to be another hero who gets undone by bigger-picture meddling more than due to any faults of her own. She might have returned if there weren’t already a lot of mages running around in the early Iron Age, but she might not have; the tone of comics was shifting away from her.
Mechanically, this is a very silly build and I’m not actually sure if it works, but it would be funny to try. In Green, Thelema covers enemies in stone, hitting them with persistent penalties and occasinally adjusting dice for better results. In Yellow, she gives herself a powerful boost and then goes back to hindering, while using her reactions to either protect heroes or undo enemy actions. And then in Red, she hides inside an invulnerable shell and uses Push The Limits to slowly chip down her own health to become a storm of prevention and defense for everyone else - at least until she passes out.
She has no ability to solve problems outside of her Principles. She has no special attacks, no Boosts for other people, no non-Principle overcomes. All that she can do is a level of battlefield control that the GM may not be prepared for.
That is pretty darn esoteric there. I haven’t seen some of those terms since doing a paper on Crowley back in college. My headcanon insists she took her dirt nap on the same property the Hellfire Club was using centuries later - there was a Cistercian abbey founded there just one year after she went to sleep, the ruins of which were still there when Dashwood was using Medmenham Abbey for his perfectly innocent club meetings.
No matter how they dressed Emma and Jean, Marvel’s Hellfire Club were pikers when it comes to hedonism compared to Dashwood or Crowley.
I mean, she can always opt to take a minor twist instead of damage for an extra reaction. Only a jerk of a GM would make her take Mid die damage, so presumably she could keep going till the scene tracker runs out - or the other players convince her to stop twisting every single character turn. 
When she’s done giving every enemy a -3 or -4 P&E penalty to remember her by (which ought to take a while anyway) there’s always basic actions. She could even take risky ones so she can generate even more twists, that’ll be great fun. If she can find a situation to apply them her die sizes are pretty good.
Definitely a quirky build. I’ve tried reaction-heavy ones myself with mixed results but not to that extreme.
Randomizers:
Approach: 4, 5, 5 [Options: Underpowered, Bully, Specialized, Overpowered, Adaptive]
Archetype: 6, 5, 6 [Options: Indomitable, Overlord, Fragile, Thief, Calamity]
Upgrade: 11, 6, 1 [Options: Mook Squad, Power Upgrade II, Power Dampening Field]
Mastery: 9, 11, 7 [Options: Mysticism, Superiority, Unfathomable]
Vitriol
Real Name: Savannah Crowley, First Appearance: Thelema #2, July 1979
Approach: Bully, Archetype: Calamity
Upgrade: Power Upgrade, Mastery: Unfathomable
Status Dice: Scene Tracker Green d6, Scene Tracker Yellow d8, Scene Tracker Red d10. Health: 45+5H (Upgraded 65+5H)
Qualities: Imposing d8, Magical Lore d8, Pyrrhic Deeds d8
Powers: Transmutation d10, Flight d8, Presence d8
Abilities:
Common Scene Elements:
Villain Archetype: Calamity
Suggested Approach Pairings: Leech, Relentless, Overpowered
Calamity villains grow more and more powerful as the scene progresses, unleashing ever-growing damage against their surroundings as the situation grows more dire.
Status:
Scene Tracker Green: d6
Scene Tracker Yellow: d8
Scene Tracker Red: d10
Health: +20
Abilities: Choose two of these abilities:
For the most part, the handful of opponents that Thelema faced during her brief run were either completely forgettable one-timers or one of Venture Comics’ existing supernatural threats. The only unique foe she developed to make any kind of impact, and the only one to have any kind of existence after the end of the hero’s run, was Vitriol.
Savannah Crowley was part of the ruling council of the Order of Purified Aether, a secret cult of alchemists whose work was based on a half-complete copy of Thelema’s works. The Order combined a handful of working spells with layers of useless rituals and restrictions, unable to tell the magic that worked from what didn’t, and used the results to finagle slightly more power and privilege in the world. Savannah believed that they could do more, proposing reckless experiments to become a true magical power. When the rest of her council opposed her, she declared war, taking on the name Vitriol and marshalling those cultists that were impressed by her vision of magical power and control.
The resulting magical war drew Thelema’s attention, and she soon found herself having to shut down both the Order and its usurper at the same time, before they unleashed a spell they couldn’t contain. In the process, Vitriol became convinced that Thelema was deliberately concealing this alchemy in order to be the only one who could wield it, and swore vengeance. She returned in a two-parter in Thelema #15-16, having gained power from the Prince of Rot which she intended to use to rebuild the Order. Once again, Thelema stood against her, saving the city from a burgeoning rot-infused doom, and Vitriol vanished in the confusion.
That was the last time the frustrated alchemist faced Thelema, but as an agent of the Prince of Rot, Vitriol would continue to make minor appearances throughout the 1980s and 1990s, ending in a two-parter in Remnants #25-26 in which she went toe to toe with Alchymia and was finally consumed by Urak. She re-appeared in the Plutonium Age as a minor villain associated with SCOURGE, with no indication given of how she survived.
Behind the Scenes
Alright, let’s start up with the final new archetype, the Calamity. The idea of a Calamity is a villain who’s literally just going to get more devastating as the scene goes on, potentially ending in a huge self-destructive explosion but potentially just growing stronger. Their abilities are all keyed to the scene tracker advancing in some way, either directly (doing more in later zones) or indirectly (reactions using the sole status die.)
As for Vitriol - she’s kind of neat, but she’s not occupying a highly unique niche. I liked the idea that she died, but she was unimportant enough that someone remembered she existed and forgot that she died and just stuck her into a story and no one ever dealt with it. One fun thing is that her ultimate attack has no friend or foe identification; any of her minions who actually make it into Red are blowing up alongside the heroes, because she just does not care.
Interesting archetype, would really like an Epic scene tracker with fewer Green and more Red boxes to work with. What have we got, one more new one to go yet?
I can’t recall, did you already do a homebrew where their status die tocks down as the scene GYRO goes up as a mirror to Calamity?
Vaguely surprised this doesn’t count ones as twos in Green for symmetry, but it would be a pretty minor effect anyway.
Certainly makes using an action to Overcome to push the scene tracker a lot more appealing.
Tempting to make an Underpowered Calamity with Power Upgrade and that ability to cancel a KO by lowering their die sizes just to see how many times they can Self-Destruct before they finally drop.
Nope, that’s the last one. We got a Thief in Bootlegger Bill, an Invader in Great-Ape, and a Warden in Master Force.
And yes, Warden ticks down as the scene tracker advances, gradually getting weaker and serving as the Calamity counterpart.
For Charging Up, I considered including the Green effect for symmetry, but the ability seemed decently powerful already so I decided to leave it out.
There are a few ways to potentially break Self-Destruct, but hopefully not too badly. Ancient is another one; you can self-destruct and then set yourself to d12+bonus health, using Charging Up to make sure you don’t end up with a bad roll. (Of course, that doesn’t work as well if you get repeatedly Hindered.)
I also thought of using it in partnership with a Focused villain who can heal the damage you’re dishing out. That would be cruel.
More like payback. Players do it all the time. The Eruption/Improved Immunity combo is pretty much Ray D8’s whole schtick in Red.
The Randomizers:
Background 8, 6, 1 [Options: Blank Slate, Upper Class, Law Enforcement, Struggling, Tragic, Interstellar]
Power Source 3, 7, 1 [Options: Accident, Genetic, Experimentation, Relic, Powered Suit, Tech Upgrades]
Archetype 3, 3, 1 [Options: Speedster, Powerhouse, Close Quarters, Armored, Transporter]
Personality 10, 2, 10 [Options: Natural Leader, Alluring, Nurturing, Arrogant]
Archie the Adventurer
Real Name: Archibald Harsbury, First Appearance: Hidden Depths #1, May 1980
Background: Upper Class, Power Source: Power Suit, Archetype: Close Quarters Combatant
Personality: Alluring, Principles: Team, Everyman
Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d12. Health: 32 [Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Fitness d10, Close Combat d10, Persuasion d8, Documentary Explorer d8
Powers: Powered Suit d10, Strength d8, Swimming d8, Leaping d8, Gadgets d6
Green Abilities:
Yellow Abilities:
Red Abilities
Out
In late 1979, a small comics publisher that had been struggling for decades finally gave up on its small superhero line. Cryptid Publications had exclusively focused on pulp-adjacent and magical heroes, but had dwindled steadily over the course of the 1960s and 1970s until its last few series were cancelled in 1978. As it happened, the editor of Venture’s Mystical desk, Lewis Maron, had grown up on the Golden Age incarnations of some of those heroes, and convinced the publisher to buy the rights to them, arguing that they could be successfully incorporated into Venture’s own setting without issue.
Pulling together the four main heroes of the Cryptid line, Maron wrote a six-issue miniseries integrating them into a single team - the Hidden Depths! The team’s leader was Archie the Adventurer, an upper-class writer who had developed a suit of magically-enhanced exploratory armor that let him venture into the strangest depths of the world. Archie was joined by magician Ilamar the Inscrutable and his chief engineer and mystical technologist Eleanor Dulac; in the first issue of Hidden Depths, the team found an ancient crypt and accidentally awakened the medieval knight Runesword - Sir Teylor Clarihue, a woman who took up her husband’s mystic sword in the past, only to be returned as an undead warrior in the present. Cryptid Publications had exclusively featured Runesword as a historical tale (THE WOMAN WHO FIGHTS LIKE A MAN!) but it wasn’t 1940 any more and Maron wanted to explore her life in a modern world.
The story was a deliberate throwback to the Golden Age, with hints of the strangeness that the Mystical desk was known for, and it was generally popular. Unfortunately for the characters, Maron became distracted by office politics. A second miniseries in 1982 was less successful, and Maron was told that he could either develop the Penitent into a full series alongside some more established heroes, or do it with the Hidden Depths, but not both. He chose the Penitent in order to build up to his vision of the Scion of Silence, and the Hidden Depths were allowed to sink into obscurity.
Archie and the Artificer would continue to appear as minor characters from time to time, whenever someone said “oh, hey, what happened to them”; Illamar largely vanished. Ironically, the most enduring member of the team was not their leader, but their final member. A few years later, another writer half-remembered the stories of Runesword, and wanting to make that story his own, reworked the concept to create a different undead knight with a magic runic sword in Knightgrave. Sir Teylor briefly became a supporting character in the pages of Knightgrave in the 1990s, and was then revived late in the Plutonium Age in a limited series that included their coming out as non-binary.
Behind the Scenes
I was challenged, and here it is - four of my characters from the original Hero Project, redesigned to fit into the world of Venture Comics! We had a slot for a Bronze Age team that fit the idea of “defunct company gets bought up, doesn’t work out great”, and I had three of the four randomizers for Archie, so I went for it. This does lock out Upper Class, Close Quarters Combatant, and Alluring, but we’re halfway through the heroes so I can live with that.
I realized how close Knightgrave and Runesword were early in writing this section, so I went ahead and made that deliberate.
Also, and this is just a side thing - I have realized that this is the third superhero with the word ‘venture’ in his title that has debuted and failed. Starting to get worried for Venturer (2019)!
Makes me wonder if the Venture Brothers show exists in-universe.
“The woman who fights like a man”! XD I love it!
I choose to believe that it does, but they’re called the Marvel Brothers. 
Thank you! It was a challenge coming up with something that was just sexist enough to make fun of without being so offensive that even including it as a joke was no good.
Up until the lawsuit, anyway. “The Shazam Brothers” just doesn’t have the same ring.
No, that’s why I picked it - Marvel Comics doesn’t exist in the metaverse!
I think that’s the real balance to walk when tapping into these meta-anachronisms.
Randomizers:
Approach: 3, 6, 2 [Options: Skilled, Prideful, Bully, Disruptive, Mastermind, Specialized]
Archetype: 10, 1, 8 [Options: Predator, Inhibitor, Loner, Squad, Fragile, Legion]
Upgrade: 3, 9, 12 [Options: Group Fighter, Defense Shield, Brainwashing Zone]
Mastery: 9, 4, 6 [Options: Enforced Order, Mercenary, Superiority]
Infiltraitor
Real Name: Maryam Hassan, First Appearance: Covert Tactics Vol. 2 #243, August 1982
Approach: Disruptive, Archetype: Legion
Upgrade: Defense Shield, Mastery: Enforced Order
Status Dice: No minions: d12. 1-2 minions: d10. 3-4 minions: d8. 5-8 minions: d6. 9+ minions: d4. Health: 15+5H
Qualities: Otherworldly Lore d10, Persuasion d10, Stealth d8, Ranged Combat d8, Classified Secrets d8
Powers: Illusions d10, Cosmic d10, Presence d8, Awareness d8
Abilities:
Common Scene Elements:
By mid-1982, Covert Tactics was wrapping up its first post-Steward storyline, and the writers were looking for something new. Swapping the Steward for Half-Life had reinvigorated the storyline, with the newly-renamed Corporal Liberty finding his footing alongside a particularly fractious team, but the writers wanted to go bigger, and so they created Infiltraitor.
Maryam Hassan was a dimensional scientist working for one of the organizations that Covert Tactics had successfully dismantled. Going underground, she made contact with other scientists and soldiers, remnants of the many experimental groups that had been taken down over the years. Together, they hatched a plan to infiltrate the heroes of Earth and destroy them from within.
Maryam first appeared in August 1982, in a storyline in which Covert Tactics went on what should have been a routine mission to save a captured scientist, only for the scientist himself to turn on them, locking them in his compound and overloading its core. Half-Life was able to absorb the radiation before the team was killed, but the scientist vanished in the confusion, and readers were treated to Infiltraitor laughing that the first experiment was a success, and the team was unable to detect her perfect duplicates. She made another minor appearance in Issue #245 a few months later, when the team fought a villain that they were sure was dead, only for him to vanish upon being defeated. That time, Big Brain spotted the mysterious woman observing them, but she escaped when he tried to chase her down.
Infiltraitor’s main attack took place in Issues #250-251, a double-sized issue in which she attacked the Covert Tactics compound with a set of duplicates who looked exactly like the members of the team! In the chaos and confusion of the team having to fight themselves, Infiltraitor escaped with blueprints and prototypes of many of the technologies that they had successfully locked away, vowing to use them to build a new organization that would defeat the team once and for all.
The villain’s final appearance came in November of that year, in which she sent a robot against the team using technology developed by Big Brain years before. The robot was easily defeated, but in the final pages of the book, Infiltraitor revealed that she had repleaced one of the members of the team, who would lead Covert Tactics to their doom.
They did not.
What the writers of Covert Tactics didn’t know was that a company-wide reboot was in the works, and they were now five issues out from being swept into it. The question of which team member had been replaced was not resolved before the Scion of Silence attacked the team, and in the world-reshaping aftermath of the event, writing duties were handed to a new team that was more interested in rebuiling Covert Tactics from the ground up than they were in following up on a “who’s the traitor” storyline. Infiltraitor’s organization was unceremoniously dumped, and the villain herself vanished. By the time any writers came around who were interested in the character, another comics company had already done a “major hero tempersonated” storyline and Venture decided they didn’t want to be seen as copycats. Instead, Infiltraitor appeared a few times as a minor AEGIS member throughout the 90s. When AEGIS was defeated in 2001, the writer at the time tried to revive Infiltraitor as part of Covert Tactics’ post-AEGIS status quo, only for that attempt to also fail with the comic’s cancellation - fortunately, because the optics of a secretive, traitorous Arab scientist undermining Americans in 2002 were controversial and poorly thought-out.
Behind the Scenes
One last D-List villain who might have been someone, except that she ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time twice and didn’t end up being anyone.
Mechanically, standard Infiltraitor can go two routes. She can create a small number of powerful minions, then use Hinders and Defends to keep them alive, or she can create tons of copycats and then try to use Hinders and healing to get back up before she gets beaten down. If she’s in Ultimate mode, that second option is far less risky, because she can’t be hurt until you deal with the fake her you’re uselessly fighting.
And with that, we are finished with the Bronze Age, and the first half of the D-Listers are complete! The timing on this is good, because I need to take a couple weeks off. This weekend is a long weekend holiday, and my normal writing time will be otherwise taken up, and next weekend is the start of a vacation for me and my normal writing time with be otherwise taken up.
Instead of long writeups, therefore, I’m going to open the floor for metaverse questions! Want to know where a particular villain was in a particular year? Want to know what poorly thought-out character storylines were created for someone? Shoot me prompts, and every day I’ll answer one in a paragraph or two. The series will resume properly on August 19th.
Good re-flavoring there. Fits her much better than force field does, and Legion baddies can certainly use the extra pseudo-Health. Mass Hinders will also make it much harder to remove with the Overcome route.
Oof. Definitely not a Good Idea. Then or now.
Enjoy your break. You still going to be around for that Pivotal Point Guard PbP game?
I will be around for the game, yes! Should have time for posts, just not for putting a week of writeups together.
Lion Dance fought “the five deadly elements” what did the Venture writers choose after Eart, Air, Fire, Water.
I have seen two different interpretations of Chinese mysticism naming the fifth and of course Miyamoto Musashi had another.
After the time skip were any “noodle incident” cross over event named? The heroes or villains talking about “a thing that happened” but never telling the readers what it was.
Now that the Gen Con adventure has introduced a 21st power source will you add it as an option to future heroes? are there any existing heroes you would rebuild with the new abilities and dice for archetype? its’ description ties into Sentinels lore but I do not see how it could not replace Accident, Experiment, Radiation, or Cosmic.
FrivYeti’s already answered this on the mirror post over on RPG.net. Air isn’t one of them, have to leave room for wood and metal. To quote from the post:
Imagine five slightly-interesting characters based on command of fire, water, earth, metal, and wood, each of whom was running a gang of martial artist cultists.
