The History of Venture Comics!

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Okay, SO.

As I’ve been pondering retcons, I have had a truly terrible flash of inspiration. It is also something of a HUGE “Kill Your Darlings” moment. As such, I need to get a quick temperature gauge from thread readers before I go and do something absolutely catastrophic to my timelines and thoroughly revise swathes of the setting.

Of the following characters, do you, as readers, have particularly strong feelings for any of the following:

  • Half-Life
  • Aquila (as a major superhero, rather than a Greenheart support)
  • Zeitgeist
  • Reckoner (as a major superhero, rather than an event)
  • Nightguard
  • Shockeye

Your answer may create something of a cascade of retcons and an extra week or two of work for me. But it may also make the setting more contained.

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As I said on the mirror thread, go ahead and beat them all with the Crisis stick until they cry. No reason Venture can’t go down that path too. Not like your real-world paycheck is at risk when you make big, bold, horribly ill-advised decisions.

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with the “as a major superhero, not a support” qualifications, I believe my answer across the board is “I don’t think so”! :slight_smile:

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Annuals

One thing that I haven’t laid out are where annuals take place, so I sat down and did a bit of book-keeping to figure out which comics get annuals and when. This is loosely based on the progression of annuals in the real world, and gets more wibbly as I move through the timeline, but it’s a good framework.

Silver Age: Annuals start being a thing in the Silver Age, with the first annuals launching in 1963. At this point, annuals are pretty much limited to the biggest comics, especially the ones who have been going for a while or that are growing. We get the following annuals from 1963 to 1969:

  • Champions of Truth Annual #1-5
  • Skybreaker Annual #1-4
  • Vanguards Annual #1-4
  • Madame Liberty Annual #1-4
  • Flatfoot Annual #1-4
  • Celestial Travels Annual #1-3

Bronze Age: In the early 1970s, annuals shift to being reprints of popular stories for a few years, and then gradually new stories start to appear again in 1974. As Venture Comics grows, the number of annuals grows again, reaching seven annuals a year in 1978 and 1979 before starting to drop off again. By the end of the Bronze Age, there are only five annuals a year, and in 1984 they are once again mostly reprints connected to the Sovereign storyline. We get the following annuals from 1970 to 1984:

  • Celestial Travels Annual #4-13
  • Covert Tactics Annual #1-9
  • Into the Green Annual #1-9
  • Skybreaker Annual #5-13
  • Dark Rivers Annual #1-7
  • Flatfoot Annual #5-10
  • Vanguards Annual #5-10
  • Venture Christmas Annual #1-6
  • Hidden Champions Annual #1-5
  • Liberty’s Dream Annual #1-4
  • Earthwatch Annual #1-3
  • Champions of Truth Annual #6-7
  • Fallout Annual #1-2
  • Cryptic Trails Annual #1-2
  • Flyboy Annual #1-2
  • Madame Liberty #1-2
  • Flatfoot and Fly Boy Annual #1
  • Thelema Annual #1
  • Lion Dancer Annual #1

Iron Age: The mid-1980s sees annuals becoming popular again, getting gradually more popular until the mid-90s. From 1988 to 1993, a growing number of annuals are also crossovers; there’s one to two annual-only crossovers per year, taking up most of the annuals. When the speculator market collapses, there are a couple years with no annuals, and when they come back, there’s really still only two or three a year for the remainder of the Iron Age, centred on the most important comics. We get the following annuals from 1985 to 2003:

  • Celestial Travels Annual #14-25
  • Skybreaker Annual #14-26
  • Champions of Truth Annual #8-19
  • Twilight Carnival Annual #1-10
  • Covert Tactics Annual #10-17
  • Broken Mirrors Annual #1-5
  • Into the Green Annual #10-14
  • Knightgrave Annual #1-5
  • New Horizons Annual #1
  • Earthwatch Annual #4
  • Company Town Annual #1-5
  • Rogue Agents Annual #1-3
  • Remnants Annual #1-2
  • Fish Out Of Water Annual #1
  • Pardoner Annual #1
  • Protean Annual #1

Plutonium Age: Starting in 2004, the number of annuals each year reliably rises to three, with occasional years that reach four. Annuals are much more likely to be weird standalone stories here, and almost never introduce new ideas or characters, but they can serve as pieces that act as epilogues or spotlight time for supporting cast members. I haven’t written out precisely which annuals are published yet, because I’m mulling over some things, but:

  • Celestial Travels, Skybreaker, Champions of Truth and Twilight Carnival probably each get roughly one annual every two years (7-8 over the period.)
  • Company Town, Protean, Cryptic Trails, Vanguards and Heretic probably each get roughly one annual every three years (4-5 over the period.)
  • There are a handful of other titles that get a single annual each.

Diamond Age: I know exactly what gets released in the Diamond Age, at least for its first two years:

  • 2019 releases Passing the Torch Annuals for Celestial Travels, Twilight Carnival, Spectacular Skybreaker, Company Town, Gale Force, Protean, and Cryptic Trails. Each of these is a reprint of a major issue from its respective line, which the writers felt was a hint of what was to come post-timeskip.
  • 2020 releases four annuals for the four comics that the editors believed would be the top successes: Starshadow Annual #1, Champions of Truth Annual #??, Vanguard Academy Annual #1, and Celestial Travels Annual #35. They are correct about three of these! Vanguard Academy Annual #1 sells quite poorly.
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Annuals are fascinating IRL. Publishers never seem to have worked out just what they’re trying to accomplish with them, and you see such a crazy mix of approaches to using those extra pages per year over the years. My personal preference has always been for standalone annuals with perhaps a guest star or team crossover. Using them to introduce new characters that you’re not confident of also seems like a safe bet. If they flop, it’s more easy to forget them entirely than if they show up in a main-series run, and the chance that they might be the new hotness will help push a few more sales and give collectors something to chase, which helps both publisher and comic shop in the long run.

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Limited Titles and One-Shots

The Gold and Silver Ages: Before the Bronze Age, there largely aren’t any limited-run titles. It’s not how the industry works. One-shots started to become a thing once annuals succeeded, so Venture should have one or two a year starting in 1966 or so, but I don’t have any notes about what they would be. Most likely, they’re crossover stories between heroes who were popular at the time, and they lead into the development of Hidden Champions in 1969.

The Bronze Age: Bolstered by a similar pattern at Sentinel Comics, Venture puts out eighteen limited run series between 1971 and 1984, in addition to the Champions of Forever reprint series released in 1983-1984, which is twelve classic issues of Champions of Truth used in part to set up the Sovereign of Secrets event. These are:

  1. Drifting Along #1-4 (1971)
  2. Candle in the Dark #1-5 (1972)
  3. TBD #1-6 (1972-1973)
  4. Heirs of Atlantis #1-6 (1973)
  5. Professor Integrity #1-3 (1973)
  6. Bolt from the Blue #1-6 (1973-1974)
  7. Path of the Lion #1-5 (1974)
  8. Lost Empire #1-3 (1976)
  9. Untitled Partisan and Madame Liberty Story #1-4 (1977)
  10. Hyperstar #1-3 (1978)
  11. Garden of Eden #1-5 (1979)
  12. Champions of Yesterday #1-4 (1979)
  13. The Drifter #1-6 (1980)
  14. Hidden Depths #1-6 (1980)
  15. Penance #1-6 (1981-1982)
  16. Hidden Corners #1-6 (1982)
  17. Scion #1-5 (1984)
  18. Silence #1-5 (1984)

In addition to this, one-shots are a thing here. In the first few years of the Bronze Age, they fade away, but around the time that annuals start printing new material, new one-shots start to appear. I assume there are around two a year from 1975 to 1985, making up a mix of crossover stories, what-ifs, and occasional stories focusing on secondary characters (especially later in the age.) The only One-Shot I current have listed is the Sovereign of Secrets One-Shot in 1984.

Iron Age: So, what should happen in the Iron Age is the release of roughly one limited series a year or two in the late 1980s, then an explosion of limited titles from 1990 to 1994, followed by a collapse and near-total lack of limited series from 1995 to 1997, then a gradual return. A lot of them should be unusual crossovers or series focusing on characters that don’t have their own titles.

What I’ve got instead is the following:

  1. Vanguards of Freedom #1-6 (1986)
  2. TBD #1-4 (1986-1987)
  3. Star Bright #1-6 (1989)
  4. Vanguards of Justice #1-5 (1989-1990)
  5. Partisans #1-4 (1990)
  6. Vanguards of Order #1-5 (1991)
  7. Tall Tale #1-4 (1991-1992)
  8. Power Flower #1-5 (1992)
  9. Elemental Fury #1-5 (1997)
  10. Vanguards of Hope #1-4 (1999)
  11. Untitled Greenheart Limited #1-5 (1999-2000)
  12. Shattered Mirrors #1-6 (2002)

There are two problems here. The first is that there aren’t nearly enough titles. Nothing in 1988, only four total over three years in 1990-1992, nothing in 1993 or 1994, then only one crossover past 2000. The second problem is that out of twelve limited series, five are about the Vanguards (counting Partisan). I think the second problem is reasonably solved by adding more limited titles, but that means I really need more limited titles.

There should also be a whole bunch of one-shots in the Iron Age: roughly two or three a year from 1985 to 1990, around four a year from 1991 to 1994, then back down to two a year starting in in 1996. Unfortunately, the only one-shots I have listed right now are three Shattered Mirrors tie-ins in 2002 for Drifter, Penitent, and Knightgrave (and I may be changing some of those.) 1985 probably has two post-Sovereign comics, one for the magical world and one for the dimensional world, that touches on what the new Venture world looks like. I believe that any year from 1986 to 1991 that doesn’t have a Vanguards limited should have a Vanguards one-shot; they’re a big enough deal that people keep using them in the period that they don’t have a comic. Aside from that, I do not know.

Plutonium Age: Oh, you thought the Iron Age was bad. There should be roughly one limited title plus two or three one-shots a year in the Plutonium Age; a lot of the limited titles will be the big crossover events of those years. Here’s what I’ve got.

  1. Night of Lost Souls #1-6 (2010)
  2. Savage Offenders #1-6 (2012)
  3. Casus Belli #1-4 (2013)
  4. Concrete Jungle #1-8 (2014-2015)

Yyeaaah. Most of the crossovers, unlike the real world, don’t have attached limited titles, and I’ve literally only listed a single other thing, a failed miniseries. That’s going to need some beefing up. Or at least noting where titles will go as I develop them.

The Diamond Age: Obviously, I don’t know much about the Diamond Age past 2019. In 2019, though, two one-shots are released, each of which deals with a secondary aspect of one of the major comics not to get an annual. These two one-shots are “Horizon Industries” and “Dr. Sunbeam: Talk It Out”.

I expect there are two one-shots released in 2020, with a third planned one-shot cancelled due to Covid.

And that’s it for book-keeping! Next week, I’ll put up my list of retcons, and then it’s time for a week off.

The week of October 28 will now feature four short updates - the revised heroes for the Bronze and Iron Age that I’ve plotted out. After that, it’s on to the villains.

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I mean, not intentionally, anyway. Fair number of Golden Age books that came out and died off so fast they were effectively limited-run books - although characters would often hop from one defunct title to another, sometimes more than once.

Maybe some of them were printed as part of the main run’s numbering but had extra pages as “special issues” instead of being proper one-shots? I seem to dimly recall that happening in a few books back in the Silver Age, where page counts (and cover prices) weren’t as set as they were in later years. A nuisance if you were subbed through Mile High, since they’d bill you extra next cycle for oversized issues that they didn’t spot before shipping your order.

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deep meta mining- making your spreadsheet have you encountered anything along the lines of “November being spooky season” or 'everything happened in the 90’s"

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The biggest thing that has popped up is “Everything starts in March.” Because of how things are set up, the majority of my comics have their first issue either in January, at the start of a year, or in March, at the anniversary of when the comic launched.

Venture is also way more likely than comics in the real world to end on a major milestone. Most of the comics either end at the end of a full year, or at a 50-issue break point. This is partially because my brain likes symmetry, but I’ve decided it’s because it’s a smaller company and they tend to give wobbling titles a chance to wrap up properly instead of just ending at #167 or whatever.

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You also don’t have shareholders screaming about why you’re still trying to sell obvious flops or management reshuffling letting petty tyrants exact revenge on creative teams the hate on a personal level. So unrealistic. :slight_smile:

Off-topic, did you see Nanomax just got dinged for four damage over on Point Guard? And you with a +3 P&E bonus to put into your d10 defend & boost reaction. Might as well hand you a cake to go with that birthday present. :slight_smile:

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Well, there was the period where that was the entirety of Venture’s inter-desk politics! :wink:

But for now, it’s Thanksgiving Monday and I’m pretty swamped, but there’s time to post:

GOLD AND SILVER AGE RETCONS

With all of my work lined up, it’s time to see what needs to be retconned. This is going to get more elaborate as we go, but today is a nice, smooth set of minor adjustments.

GOLDEN AGE

There’s only a single revision for the Golden Age:

  • Coven is getting promoted to a C-Lister. I’ve decided that she shifts quite quickly from ‘evil witch’ to ‘kind of silly’ in the Silver Age, and ends up being a perennial thorn in Greenheart’s side. This is partially for character assignment purposes and partially because I wanted a Golden Age villain who started murderous, became a silly villain, and then eventually reverted and Coven already fit the bill.

SILVER AGE

Again, not many changes here. But for those keeping track:

  • I noted this one a while ago, but it’s Kid Liberty who founds Covert Tactics. He doesn’t change his name to Corporal Liberty until after the Steward leaves the team. (This is largely because I don’t feel like reverting him to a teen in the Iron Age makes sense if his Silver Age version was already an adult.)
  • Vanguards Annual #1 was incorrectly listed as taking place in 1963, in the first run of annuals. It actually takes place in 1964.
  • Leading Man is also getting a C-Lister upgrade. I like him and his silly shtick too much, and I want the fans to feel the same. He still joins up with Red Herring in the 80s, but now he gets to be one of Red’s major lieutenants (I think I need to decide on a name for that organization so that I can continue to reference it.)
  • Fission does not join the Vanguards in 1968 alongside Nucleon. Instead, he stays in Santa Juanita to defend it, leaving all three of the Reactors going to three different places. He pops up a few times in Vanguards and Hidden Champions between 1968 and 1970 as a supporting character.
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BRONZE AND IRON AGES

Okay, now we are getting into the larger retcons. Hold onto your hats.

BRONZE AGE

There are a handful of adjustments in the Bronze Age. Mostly, they’re here to make the stalwarts of the Venture line not go missing for long periods of time, but there are also a couple of big changes.

  • Half-Life is now Trevor Finn, formerly known as Fission. He is overloaded by radiation while investigating criminal enterprises, and blamed for the resulting explosion; he takes on a false identity because he wants the conspiracy to think he’s dead. He headlines the Fallout comic, before joining Earthwatch (not Covert Tactics) in 1979. I will be writing up a revised character sheet for him.
  • Instead of Reverie, who is doing Champions stuff, the Drifter joins Dark Rivers in 1974, in Issue #61. He leaves after Issue #100 in 1977, returning the series to a Veilwalker solo. This probably matches a particular writing team.
  • The fourth EIC is H.R. Randall, who comes in as a skilled writer new to management in 1975. The rifts created under Mossby grow worse, and feuds break out until Randall gets things back under control in 1983. He is then in charge through the Iron Age changeover, eventually departing in 1988.
  • Aquila is revised down to being almost purely a Greenheart supporting character. His storyline doesn’t change, but I’m going to write a Bronze Age Greenheart variant to represent her returning to her roman roots while keeping some of her Silver Age flair.
  • Rather than having a long gap between Madame Liberty in 1977 and the launch of Liberty’s Dream, there’s only a five-month gap, which is filled by a Madame Liberty and Partisan story, and then Liberty’s Dream (Vol. 2) launches in 1975. As a result, Liberty’s Dream ends with #97, giving it a longer run and further establishing the Madame Liberty / Reverie pairing.
  • The Champions of Truth now run until August 1980, ending with #180. Their cancellation is the first big sign that there’s a problem, which takes a few more years to be properly addressed.
  • There is now a moderately popular Drifter six-issue miniseries in 1980-1981, which leads to him being chosen as part of the World of Wonders comic.
  • Skybreaker Stories now goes to #325, ending in January of 1984; while his line is struggling a bit, he only gets cancelled because the Sovereign event is starting and the writers aren’t sure how to fit him in.
  • The Champions of Forever reprint miniseries is reduced to eight issues; it fills in the publishing slot that Skybreaker has vacated.
  • The Penitent is replacing her Principle of Amnesia, which was meant to cover her fragmented memories of her past but which didn’t really get delved into, with a Principle of Business. As the sole inheritor of Scion’s wealth, she is actually the owner of a small business empire. This makes her our millionaire superhero using their business resources for good, and follows up on the idea that the Golden Age Penitent was probably also a millionaire.

IRON AGE

Here, we hit a slew of edits and changes, both to characters and to lineups. I’m going to try to keep these changes chronological as much as possible.

  • The Broken Wonders four-issue limited series running from 1984 to 1985 serves as a lead-in to Broken Mirrors, but also a side story explaining why Penitent and Wonderer reform a magical Champions of Truth in order to deal with the aftermath of the Sovereign’s assault on reality.
  • Half-Life remains a member of Earthwatch, rather than joining Covert Tactics.
  • Charity Garrett was the lead writer for the first sixty issues of Spectacular Skybreaker (1984 - 1989) before leaving to take over writing Covert Tactics. The second Skybreaker team ran from January 1990 to April 1993, and then the third team came in and had a disastrous run from May 1993 to October 1995. Garrett was brought back to save the line in November 1995, and continued through 1998, at which point she left again and her replacements launched the Solace storyline which initially annoyed fans before they decided that actually they loved it.
  • The Reckoning still happens to Xur’Tan in 1987, but rather than it happening to a new character, it’s Doctor Cosmos who absorbs the power of the World-Maggot as she tries to save the Xur’Tani homeworld. She becomes Reckoner, her existing cosmic powers amplified by the creature’s transformation. The Xur’Tani still make the choice to sacrifice their world, but they don’t get a cosmic hero out of it, leading to the desperation that sets off the Peacekeeper arc. I will be writing a revised character sheet for Reckoner.
  • The Remnants are being shrunk to six members - Razorline is vanishing from existence because both her name and her theme are already taken.
  • In 1992, Partisan joins Covert Tactics after they’re attacked by the Vanguards. He stays part of the team through the AEGIS arc before rejoining the Vanguards in 1999.
  • Flatfoot’s return to Venture Comics happens in 1992 in Company Town #50, once Paradox starts making progress, instead of three years later when the comic is in danger.
  • In 1992, the comic “Fish out of Water” is retconned and replaced by “Stargazers”. Stargazers follows Zeitgeist and Hyperstar, after Zeitgeist is captured by AEGIS, experimented on to hone his psychic powers, and then broken out by Hyperstar and Covert Tactics. The two aliens end up on the run in a much more hostile world which they still love and want to protect. I’ll be writing an Iron Age Zeitgeist character sheet to replace Shockeye.
  • This isn’t so much a retcon as a clarification, but after the defeat of the Overseer in Issue #100, Company Town became something of an anthology comic. About half of the issues would be about the Rogue Agents, and the other half were about Flatfoot, Fly Boy, Revenant, some combination of the above, or the occasional single issue about a villain, supporting character, or other hero visiting Ferrisville or Ferristown. Revenant left the title in 2002, but the others stayed for its duration.
  • In 1995, a few months after the end of Remnants, Alchymia, Drifter, and Moon Angel join forces in Anima, which is largely about Alchymia’s efforts to build a new nation for the Animates. The series lasts twenty-four issues, and leads into the previously-mentioned Elemental Fury limited series starring Alchymia, Penitent, and Reverie.
  • In 1997, after AEGIS is defeated, Hyperstar is recruited to the Champions of Truth and leaves Stargazers. Zeitgeist is joined by Drifter and Reverie for the remainder of the comic’s run.
  • Shatterpoint is our third character to get buffed to a C-Lister because of the importance of his first story; he continues to appear from time to time in the Plutonium Age.
  • Penitent and Greenheart have a 1998 comic called Dark Rome, a five-issue limited in which they are joined by Aquila in putting the ghosts raised by Greyheart to rest.
  • Greenheart gets a currently untitled twelve-issue limited series in 1999-2000, which follows from Dark Rome and features Aquila as a side character.
  • In November 2000, it’s Zeitgeist who takes over as the new leader for Earthwatch.
  • The Shattered Mirror one-shot tie-ins are now Knightgrave, Vanguards, and Madame Liberty. Drifter is part of the main storyline, and Penitent appears in the Knightgrave one-shot.
  • Covert Tactics Vol. 4 needs a rewrite, because most of the characters I shoved in there aren’t around now. It now features Big Brain, Irogane, Revenant, Knightgrave, and Penitent, making it a blend of super-science and dark magic.
  • I’ve pushed up to twenty-one limited series, which feels much better than twelve. Most of them are currently untitled and don’t have people listed, but some were listed above.
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Brief retcon update after conversation elsewhere!

Greenheart’s twelve-issue limited run in 1999-2000 is called Greenheart: Cry Havoc. It features Prospero as its primary villain, and culminates in her having to kill him, which then leads into another limited run that I’ve slotted in between Greenheart and Penitent, Memento Mori. That, in turn, has echoes into the 2002 launch of the new volume Cryptic Trails.

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That seems like a much more marketable title than Pacem Appelant was over on the mirror thread. Latin phrases referencing Tacitus aren’t the best way to move books. :slight_smile:

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PLUTONIUM AND DIAMOND AGES

One truly massive set of retcons and changes, and one pretty small and simple setup. Let’s take a look.

PLUTONIUM AGE

Here’s where the real magic happens. Because I rushed through the Plutonium Age, I didn’t make it nearly radioactive enough, and I also messed up more than a few comic titles, and a few of the biggest names in Venture Comics just flat-out vanished. This means that fixing the Plutonium Age is going to require a whole bunch of cancellations, reboots, and shifts in direction on top of the big company-wide crossovers already listed! My main goal here is that none of the comics that were active for the existing crossovers can be removed, but some of the smaller tie-ins are getting revisions and some numbering is changing. Because I’ve absolutely mucked around in here, I’m going to try to use paragraphs instead of bullet points to make it easier to read.

2002: I’ve been resisting it, and I should have done this on Wednesday, but the Plutonium Age is generally considered to begin in 2002, not 2004. There aren’t any major events in 2004 that would serve as a starting point, so Shattered Mirrors is now the kickoff. This means that Golden Retriever is now the first Plutonium Age superhero, and Headmaster and Adjudicator Zhaa are Plutonium Age villains. This also means I need to write up another Iron Age EXTREME version of a hero to fill my ranks, and add two more Iron Age villains to my set, which is going to do some stuff to my November schedule.

2004: Cryptic Trails started as a Greenheart story where she met other heroes, but #20 is a Drifter-only story. The Drifter slowly gets more solo stories in 2004-2005, Reverie starts getting solo stories in 2006 after Liberty’s Dream ends, and Lostwood starts getting stories in 2007. In 2008, after being depowered, Greenheart travels to Lostwood and is fully removed from the title, which becomes mainly Reverie and Lostwood-based, with occasional stories about the Drifter, minor heroes, or mystic villains.

2006: In mid-2006, Penitent and Knightgrave leave Covert Tactics. They are replaced by Alchymia and Kid Liberty, who are coming out of the end of Liberty’s Dream.

Twilight Carnival ends with Issue #260 in August 2006. The series ends with the death of Dawn Rider, and the team fracturing. Prometheus and Winter Wolf return to Lostwood and Veilwalker strikes out on her own.

Dark Rivers Vol. 2 replaces Twilight Carnival. It’s a comic featuring Veilwalker, Knightgrave, Penitent, and Madame Liberty seeking out dark magical problems. Winter Wolf and Prometheus move to Cryptic Trails as backup stories. Dark Rivers also launches as a two-month crossover event with Spectacular Skybreaker and Cryptic Trails; there are single-issue tie-ins for Champions of Truth, Heretic, and Protean.

2008: Kid Liberty leaves Covert Tactics in 2008 to set up the new Champions of Freedom.

Dark Rivers features the Wonderer during the Shock and Awe event; the heroes get him to Lostwood for safety. Dark Rivers also replaces Twilight Carnival during the “Night of Lost Souls” event.

2009: When Champions of Freedom isn’t doing well, there is a limited series four-issue summer event that I’ll define eventually featuring a new major villain which crosses over with the title, and which includes one or two tie-in issues for Heretic, Dark Rivers, Spectacular Skybreaker, Company Town, Earthwatch, Protean, and Vanguards. It does not succeed.

2010: After the end of the Night of Lost Souls, Dark Rivers is cancelled, with Madame Liberty rejoining the Champions. Penitent joins Drifter and Reverie for Stargazers Vol. 2, which replaces Dark Rivers runs for five years.

Nightguard dies in a grand sacrifice in Earthwatch #120 in 2010. This is not received well, and is retroactively considered to be part of the problems spreading through the company in this period.

Deirdre Powell takes over Earthwatch with Issue #121, right after Nightguard’s death. She is the writer for Earthwatch up to Issue #144. The final six-issue volume, “Graduation Day”, is written by a veteran guest writer who comes in to tie up the loose threads and give Earthwatch a proper send-off. Also, my numbering for Earthwatch was consistently off by ten issues. Tiberius Rex actually appears in Issue #125; Powell brings him onto the team at the end of her first volume to replace Nightguard. This probably contributes to his unpopularity with fans, even though Nightguard’s death wasn’t her choice.

2012: Cryptic Trails ends at #100 in January 2012. It’s replaced by Twilight Carnival Vol. 2, in which a young Lostwood hero called Moon Rider gathers the original Carnival members to return Dawn Rider’s soul to her body, which is being controlled by a few of the darker souls from her knives. The new Twilight Carnival runs until the end of the Plutonium Age, and Moon Rider is popular enough that I’ll need to write her.

2014: Gale Force now begins earlier, in June 2014. As a result, Gale Force takes part in the Concrete Jungle storyline as a supporting character instead of Greenheart. Because Nightguard is not around, we’re going to have Wicker show up to be Gale Force’s pal and backup.

2015: Heretic ends at #120 in October 2015, at the same time that Stargazers ends at #60. The two series are replaced by Hell’s Belles, a new comic featuring Heretic, Penitent, and Solace dealing with magical problems while having huge personality clashes. Hell’s Belles is a moderately popular series, but was designed to be short-lived; it ends with Issue #36 in October 2018.

The other comic to replace these is Hidden Champions (Vol. 2), which runs for forty issues from November 2015 to February 2019. This anthology comic is a series of two-parters and three-parters in which one member of the Champions of Truth joins up with a handful of other Venture Comics heroes to deal with a particular problem, as the new Champions try to build formal connections and relations with the world’s other superheroes. It occasionally features entirely new heroes, although none of them show up in future issues.

2016: Company Town ends with Issue #325 in February 2016. It’s replaced by the three-issue limited comic Deus Ex Machina, in which the Rogue Agents try and fail to prevent the Overseer from coming online, and which is followed up by System Crash #1-6, the main storyline for System Crash which every other comic interacts with.

After the end of System Crash, a new comic launches: Brave New World. It is a team-up comic between Paradox, Irogane, and Revenant, who are working to dismantle the last remnants of Mr. Ferris’s organizations. Brave New World is intended to be a twelve-issue limited series, but proves popular enough to get extended to #25, ending with Passing the Torch in December 2018. Because of Brave New World, I actually do have a place for Gravedigger to return, so she’s going to return and be the fourth and final of the D-List villains I wrote to be promoted to a C-Lister.

2017: Every annual and one-shot in 2017 is about the same topic; it’s the last crossover event of the Plutonium Age, it happens largely without touching on any major comic, and I have no idea what it’s about and won’t for a while.

Whew! The result of all of this is that only three comics run uninterrupted through the Plutonium Age: Celestial Travels, Spectacular Skybreaker, and Protean. Champions of Truth ends with a very high issue count, because it gets restarted at #499 instead of as a new volume. Aside from that, the second volume of Twilight Carnival almost but does not quite reach #100, Gale Force makes it to #56, and then there’s a slide: Hidden Champions reaches #40, Hell’s Belles gets to #36, and House of Jotu-Kal and Brave New World both end at #25.

DIAMOND AGE

Since the Diamond Age only has thirteen issues per line, I have only two retcons. One of them is small, and the other one might not technically be countering anything that I’ve written, but definitely expands on things.

  • Post-timeskip, the former Kid Liberty goes by Sergeant Liberty, calling back to his late Bronze Age days. I think keeping the military theme suits him rather than calling him “Liberator”, which ironically feels much more aggressive.
  • Protean didn’t just investigate Horizon Industries in Venture into the Unknown, she took it over. In the Diamond Age, she is a tech millionaire with an eight-figure income who pioneers sustainable and assistive technologies; she built the most recent iteration of Captain Bolt’s suit personally. Almost all of the money she makes is immediately funnelled into a mixture of tech development, superhero support, and charity, so there’s a running gag that even though she makes over fifty million dollars a year, she still lives in a little house on the edge of town and drives a crappy car (which she has admittedly souped up herself) and wears secondhand clothing. Wendy funds a handful of superheroes as part of her charitable activities, secretly including herself as Protean.

And that’s it for our retcons, rewriters, and re-establishments! Time to take some time off for a work conference, and I’ll make my next official post on Friday the 25th, as I begin filling in replacement hero sheets, followed by villains running from November 11th to January 1st.

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If she’s on par with Marilyn Moonlight I heartily approve. Easily the best new character I’ve seen out of DC in the last few years. No one whose origins are connected to Terra-Man has any right being so cool. :slight_smile:

So kind of a modern-day parallel to the old team-up books like DC Presents or Marvel Two-In-One/Team-Up, but with a rotating “lead” from the CoT team? Seems viable, although I admit to a bias toward that style of book to begin with.

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Those were my thoughts, yeah! The original Hidden Champions was my version of “Secret Defenders” with Dr. Strange gathering heroes to support him on a mission-by-mission basis, and which I have only recently learned was an incredibly short-lived Marvel title that was much, much longer in my childhood imagination.

The new one is much more of the Team-Up genre. Venture usually has at least one thematically linked anthology-style comic running at any given time, and this is the one for that period. Given that it only lasts three and a half years and there are nine Champions in this period, there probably aren’t a lot of stories for any given character, but there’s a few fan favourites that show up.

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Half-Life

HalfLifeRevised
HalfLifeRevised400×575 302 KB

Real Name: Trevor Finn, First Appearance: (as Half-Life) Fallout #1, Nov 1970
Background: Tragic, Power Source: Radiation, Archetype: Minion Maker
Personality: Decisive, Principles: Fugitive, Great Power

Status Dice: Green d8, Yellow d8, Red d10. Health: 30 [Green 30-23, Yellow 22-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Close Combat d10, Investigation d10, Banter d8, Criminal Underworld d8, Alertness d8, One-Man Army d8
Powers: Nuclear d10, Duplication d10, Vitality d6

Green Abilities:

  • Erupt [A]: Attack multiple targets using Nuclear, applying your Min die to each. If you roll doubles, also attack an ally using your Mid die.
  • Fission [A]: Create a minion using Duplication. Reference the minion chart to see what size of minion it is. Choose whether it can Attack, Defend, Boost, Hinder, or Overcome. It acts on the start of your turn. You can only use this ability in a situation conducive to how you create minions.
  • Radiate [A]: Boost another hero or one of your minions using Nuclear. Either use your Max die, or use your Mid die and make that bonus persistent.
  • Principle of the Fugitive [A]: Overcome a problem by directing those pursuing you towards it and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
  • Principle of Great Power [A]: Overcome a situation using one of your highest rated powers and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.

Yellow Abilities:

  • Fragmentation [A]: Boost yourself using Duplication. Then, either remove a penalty on yourself or Recover using your Min die.
  • Split [A]: Create a minion using Nuclear. Use your Min die. Choose which basic action it can perform. It acts now and at the start of your turns.
  • Fissile Duplicates [R]: Whenever one of your bonuses, penalties, or other creation of your powers is destroyed, deal a target damage equal to the roll of your Nuclear die.

Red Abilities

  • Dissolution (I): You have no limit on 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.
  • Point of No Return [A]: Use Nuclear to create a number of d6 minions equal to your Mid die. Choose the one same basic action that they each perform. They all act at the start of your turn.

Out

  • Boost an ally by rolling your single Nuclear die.

Our first revised character is the new Half-Life. One thing missing from Venture Comics are heroes who change names, so I figured I might as well have Fission take on a more ominous-sounding name when his powers start to go out of control, creating volatile radioactive duplicates. There is a lot of twist potential there. The basic arc of his story is the same - he’s investigating a suspicious mystery, there’s an explosion of unknown energies that overwhelm him, and his powers go haywire in response. He goes undercover, being chased by criminals and authorities alike, while he tries to clear his name.

Half-Life is not entirely a legal character, because I had a thing I wanted him to do thematically and I struggled and I struggled and I gave up. He has taken Fissile Duplicates as a Radiation power source yellow ability, even though the actual ability only exists in Unknown. It is thematically appropriate so I don’t care, and it sets up his finale where he unleashes a swarm of small minions, then hits everything including those minions with a nuclear blast, and then his minions explode and do even more damage and he probably passes out.

One fun side fact is that Isotope is now an even more direct parallel to Half-Life, having tried to copy his duplicating powers and instead absorbing her workers into a monstrous gestalt.

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943

Reminder: Secret Method Three exists for a reason. :slight_smile:

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