The History of Venture Comics!

This also means that I can, at some point, do a comic where Flatfoot, Golden Retriever, and Wyldstyle team up to fight a team-up between Purifier and Domin-8. All robots all the time.

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Battlebots, Venture Comics-style. :slight_smile:

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President Trake

Real Name: Trake ur-Assel, First Appearance: (as Prime Minister) Celestial Travels #794, Apr 2005
Approach: Tactician, Archetype: Warden
Upgrade: Villainous Vehicle, Mastery: Profitability

Status Dice: Scene Tracker Green d10, Scene Tracker Yellow d8, Scene Tracker Red d6. Health: 40+5H (Upgraded 55+5H)
Qualities: Self-Discipline d10, Deep Space Knowledge d8, Alertness d6, President-For-Life d8
Powers: Nuclear d8, Presence d8, Speed d6, Gadgets d6

Abilities:

  • Buoyed by Power (I): As long as you have at least one nearby ally, you may reroll all 1s on your dice.
  • Power Surge [A]: Boost using Self-Discipline and use your Max die. That bonus applies to every ally’s action until the beginning of your next turn.
  • Nuclear Field [A]: Attack using Nuclear. Hinder that target using your Max die. That Hinder is persistent and exclusive as long as you are active, but does not apply to actions taken against you.
  • No Openings [R]: When a hero in the same location would take an Overcome action, Hinder them with your sole status die. Apply the penalty to their Overcome result.
  • (U) Automated Mech-Suit (I): Trake’s mech-suit acts as a d10 lieutenant with the following abilities:
    • Barrage [A]: Attack all heroes with the suit’s roll. Use this ability only if the suit is below its starting die size or the scene is in the Red zone.
    • Defensive Systems [R]: When Trake is Attacked, roll the mech suit’s single die as a Defend, and then apply the remaining damage to both Trake and the suit.
    • Retreat [R]: When Trake is Attacked, roll the mech suit’s die. If it rolls higher than Trake’s current Health, both Trake and his suit escape the scene.
  • (U) Master of Profitability (I): If you have access to great wealth and other resources, automatically succeed at an Overcome to leverage those resources to get even richer, no matter who else pays the price.

Common Scene Elements:

  • Uranian Commandos. D8 lieutenants. When Uranian Commandos Hinder, they also deal damage equal to the penalty created.
  • A Cunning Plot. A complex challenge that interferes with the heroes or creates obstacles and penalties.
  • A Vulnerable World. An environment with low-tech aliens, potential resources, and Uranian soldiers.

In 2005, eight years of publication time and roughly a year of comics time after the formation of the Grand Galactic Union, the fledgling galactic government won a major public relations win when the dominant faction of the ongoing Uranian civil war, which had begun during the World-Maggot attacks, asked for official Union recognition and swore to follow Union laws. The Celestial Travelers arrived to oversee the situation, and were unpleasantly surprised to learn that the new president of the Free Uranian League was none other than their old foe, Lord Trake. Trake swore that he was setting aside his warlording days; the new Uranian constitution offered amnesty for domestic crimes, and any crimes against other polities had been done by a now-dissolved government, not by him. Trake also pointed out to the Travelers that he was the only thing standing between the galaxy and a raft of bickering Uranian warlords, and convinced them to protect him through the ratification of the League’s entry into the Union.

The truth, of course, was that Trake was scheming, but to the frustration of his foes the one part of his scheme that was true was that he wanted into the Union, and that he was willing to curb the Uranian war machine to do it. Instead, he began to gather a political power base within the Union, with the goal of shifting it to a more rapacious, conquerer-friendly polity. He looked for loopholes in the laws, and exploited them, setting up deniable operations and using his own reputation to distract heroes while his forces quietly looted locations and hid the evidence.

The worst of it, as Reckoner said at one point, was that even with all of the schemes and the theft, as President Trake was still doing less damage than he’d done as a warlord. The Celestial Travelers committed to opposing him politically, unraveling his plans where possible, and working to prevent the Uranians from hijacking the Union for their own purposes.

Behind the Scenes

A decent subset of my Plutonium Age villains are going to be redesigns of earlier villains, to reflect changes in characters that ended displacing or or supplementing the original. The first of these is one of our oldest foes, Trake! From a bully overlord to a bully politician feels about right for the character; as a Warden, he’s not actually the primary threat in the scene, instead serving as a blustering general who vanishes when things get really nasty.

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Unfortunately, choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil.

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The Letters Page taught us to choose the lesser evil. If you’ll recall Adam joining the Cult of Gloom to drink IPAs in the swamp, Christopher asked him specifically “But what if no evil?” and Adam says always choose the lesser.

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The only thing The Letters Page taught me is not to expect anything but stray crumbs for RPG content.

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Dollhouse

Real Name: Maurice Zygard, First Appearance: Dark Rivers (Vol. 2) #4, December 2006
Approach: Overpowered, Archetype: Titan
Upgrade: Brainwashing Zone, Mastery: Malice

Status Dice: Begins at d12. Health: 65+5H (Upgraded 75+5H)
Qualities: Alertness d8, Magical Lore d6, Haunted House d8
Powers: Illusions d12, Transmutation d10, Teleportation d10

Unique Challenge: Heart of the House.
[] []:
Break the wards hidden around Dollhouse’s body to reveal the pathways to his heart and reduce his status to d10.
[] []: Navigate to the heart of the House, where Dollhouse is weaker, and reduce his status to d8.
[__]: Destroy the Heart at the centre of Dollhouse’s body to weaken his hold and reduce his status to d6. This also reduces all of his Power dice to d8.

Abilities:

  • Fix the Cracks [A]: Boost using Transmutation. Recover Health equal to your Max die. Each of your nearby allies Recovers Health equal to your Min die. Each of your nearby minions and lieutenants whose die sizes have degraded at all are increased one die size.
  • Trap Door [A]: Attack using Teleportation and use your Max die. The target can either be Hindered equal to your Max+Mid+Min dice, or be unable to take any other actions other than using an Overcome to attempt to escape.
  • Ghostly Apparitions [A]: Attack using Illusions against multiple targets. Hinder those targets with your Min die.
  • Broken Boards [R]: When Attacked, Defend yourself by rolling your single Transmutation die. Deal that much damage to a different nearby target.
  • Embodiment (I): While Dollhouse’s status is d12, reduce all damage taken by 8 and all penalties taken by -1. While Dollhau’s status is d10, reduce all damage taken by 4. While Dollhouse’s status is d6, double all damage taken.
  • (U) Turning To Toys (I): While the scene is in the Green zone, all heroes’ quality dice at d8 or above are reduced one size. In the Yellow zone, all heroes’ quality dice at d10 or above are reduced two die sizes. In the Red zone, all heroes’ quality dice are treated as if they are d4. Heroes may remove this ability with three Overcome successes. If a hero takes a minor twist, the hero must lose access to a quality entirely until this ability is removed. If a hero is knocked out while this ability is active, you may create a new minion using the hero’s highest power die to represent the transfigured version of that hero.
  • (U) Master of Malice (I): When you take an action to demonstrate or indulge in cruelty, automatically succeed at an Overcome to inflict pain or fear.

Common Scene Elements:

  • Manor of Mysteries. Simple challenges that apply penalties until resolved; they must be resolved before Dollhouse’s challenge can be attempted, and appear gradually as time goes on.
  • Dolls: d8 minions in the shape of previous victims. Dolls always succeed on saves against 3 damage or less.
  • The House: The House acts as a hostile environment, creating Hinders, separating players, and spawning minions who stalk the heroes.

In 2006, with the ending of Twilight Carnival, Venture Comics set about putting together a new team of magical heroes to act as the ‘magical Champions of Truth’. With classic hero Veilwalker back in play, the decision was made to revive Dark Rivers headlining Veilwalker and Reverie. Knightgrave and Penitent were added due to their successful limited series together, and finally Madame Liberty was put into the mix as an editorial mandate, having just worked with Reverie in Liberty’s Dream.

The five heroes would face off against dangerous magical foes and strange dimensional creatures, many of them pulled from their individual past stories. But one new enemy, originally intended to be a one-off, became a defining villain for both them and other magical heroes going forward.

Maurice Zygard had been a serial killer in the 1800s. Dubbed the ‘dollmaker’ by the press for his habit of killing victims and turning them into dioramas of dolls in their own homes, Zygard was a remorseless killer who was burned to death within his lair by an angry mob. This, of course, did not stop him. Buoyed by hatred, his ghost lingered in the world, eventually inhabiting a new home built on the ruins of his former haunt. He possessed the house, capturing the people who lived within it and turning them into living dolls for his amusement, and then began to seek out new victims. Zygard had the power to wreath the entire building he occupied in mists, teleporting himself and his halls of victims into new buildings and seamlessly integrating his secret passages within them - creating a mysterious Dollhouse.

The Dollhouse was a terrifying threat, but in its first appearance it proved no match for five powerful heroes. Although Zygard tried to separate them and break their wills, they shattered his wards, found his heart, and banished his withered soul, freeing his living collection and putting the dead to rest. But death could not stop a man like the Dollhouse. He would return again, finding cracks in reality to ooze through, using foolish would-be sorcerers to establish himself, and then seeking out new victims. His goals were modest, but his House could not be contained; its passages would slowly spread into nearby buildings, drawing more would-be victims, and soon someone would arrive to try and stop him. Dollhouse’s only goals in these cases was to escape with new dolls for his collection, and though he was usually stopped, there was often a price to pay.

Behind the Scenes

Evil haunted house! I wanted an evil living location, and a ghost who turns places into haunted houses felt appropriate, especially with a collection vibe to distinguish him from other ghosts we’ve seen. Dollhouse is set up to be a full challenge; an environment, villain, and challenges all wrapped up in a single event.

You may notice that Dollhouse has a more in-depth set of challenges, and also a pretty gnarly weakness if you can solve all of them, in exchange for being almost unstoppable to begin with. This felt right for a haunted house villain; he’s a massive threat to be resolved, ending in a really satisfying punch-out once he’s on the back foot.

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Neat Titan variant. One of the villains from those aborted Halloween games I had scheduled back in October was going to be a similar idea but yours is a nastier take on it, I think. Really pretty unbeatable until you grind through at least 4 challenges, and probably 7 with the upgrade - plus any MoM challenges that pop up. And while you’re doing that it’s probably steadily Trapdooring heroes.

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Heh, neat. When I saw that profile picture I knew something strange was going on.

Dollhouse is interesting in that, thematically at least, he’s a villain who seems like he pretty much always has an environment. And mechanically, I imagine he would rarely appear without his House environment. In this way, he appears to be, like, a pseudo-Domain villain, theme-wise, at least. Also, I imagine you could roll some of his elements into a House environment and just have it be the only representation of him in a scene, if you wanted to do some kind of thing where the heroes had to fight another villain inside of his House, which could be a neat story.

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hot damn, what a thumbnail! :open_mouth: this is so cool!

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Yeah, trying to just punch Dollhouse out isn’t a particularly viable approach; he’s really set up to encourage the Overcomes, and you want to telegraph that. With a bit of luck you can start wearing him down early, but you’re going to want to watch out.

Yep! I wanted him to be a Titan so that you couldn’t just bypass him, but he’s a particularly environment-based one. I think you could have a situation where you’re just fighting Dollhouse and he’s sending hordes of dolls to slow you down, rather than having an environment, but it would be the odd story out.

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Vortex (II)

Real Name: Huang Zhi, First Appearance: (post-augmentation) Earthwatch #105, July 2009
Approach: Adaptive, Archetype: Bruiser
Upgrade: Quality Upgrade, Mastery: Annihilation

Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10. Health: 35+5H (Upgraded 55+5H)
Qualities: Close Combat d10, Stealth d8, Alertness d8, Terrorist Leader d8
Powers: Wind d10, Flight d8, Lightning Calculator d8, Speed d6

Abilities:

  • Unstable Augmentations (I): The first time each scene that your personal zone changes from Green to Yellow or from Yellow to Red, take d6 irreducible damage and increase all your powers by one die size each (to a maximum of d12) until the end of the scene.
  • Fluid Form (I): Reduce damage taken by physical and energy sources by 1 while in the Green zone, 2 in the Yellow zone, and 3 in the Red zone.
  • Headwinds [A]: Boost using Wind and use your Max die. Attack with your Mid die. Defend with your Min die.
  • Gusts [A]: Attack using Wind and use your Max die. Either Hinder that target with your Mid die or Attack another nearby target with your Mid die.
  • Rocket Dodge [R]: When Attacked, Defend by rolling your single Flight die. Also Boost yourself with the result of that die.
  • (U) Experienced Terrorist (I): Increase your Close Combat to d12 and your Stealth and Alertness to d10.
  • (U) Master of Annihilation (I): If you can cause massive collateral damage without regard for casualties, automatically succeed at an Overcome where a show of overwhelming force can solve the problem.

Common Scene Elements:

  • The Cold Wind: d8 lieutenants. The Cold Wind can add +2 to any basic action; if they do, step down their die afterwards.
  • A High-Security Target. An environment that is likely to create collateral damage if destroyed, such as a major bridge during rush hour or a nuclear power plant.

In 2009, Gale Force’s extremely complicated relationship with her mother finally reached a breaking point, with disastrous consequences for Earthwatch. Vortex had clashed with the team several times, growing increasingly open about her belief that her daughter had been ‘seduced’ by the Western world, giving in to ‘decadence’ and ‘societal depravity’. Her clients slowly became more extreme, and in 2009 she decided to take matters into her own hands, gathering her most loyal Cold Wind soldiers and attacking Neulyon’s Acherston Nuclear Power Plant. Her goal was to trigger a meltdown that would render the city uninhabitable, throwing the United States into chaos and allowing her to begin a campaign of insurrections across the world.

When Earthwatch responded, Vortex delivered an ultimatum to Gale Force. She would have no child who served with the enemy, and if Aihan didn’t back down, Vortex would treat her as any other pawn of imperialism. For her part, Aihan responded that she couldn’t let her mother kill hundreds of thousands of innocents over a political disagreement, and the two fought almost to the death, screaming through the sky at each other. In the process, Gale Force learned that the aging mercenary had undergone a second procedure to improve her powers, leaving them stronger but unpredictable.

Vortex would make a second appearance fighting the team, when she tried to bring a satellite down on their headquarters in December, but it was in Earthwatch #120 in October 2010 that she delivered her most brutal blow. Earthwatch responded to an attempt by Vortex to detonate a series of oil platforms across the Gulf of Mexico, triggering a spill that would devastate the local ecosystem. As they fought on the platform, Vortex revealed that she had rigged the entire area, with the goal of killing herself and all of Earthwatch, releasing and igniting the oil at once, and spreading fire across five hundred miles of ocean. At the last instant, as the team desperately tried to find a solution and Vortex beat her daughter almost to death, Nightguard transformed himself into a swarm of bats larger than anything he had ever accomplished, grabbing every bomb at once and flying them into the air with Vortex in pursuit. The bombs exploded, sending shockwaves across the ocean, and when the smoke cleared, Nightguard’s body crashed back to the deck. He had just enough time to tell Gale Force that she would endure before dying.

Vortex had seemed to die in the explosion as well, but her newly-unstable body couldn’t be destroyed so easily. Over the next decade, she would periodically reform from the winds, gathering her disciplines and launching a new terrorist attack. Any lingering hope that her mother could be saved had been extinguished when Nightguard died, and each time that she surfaced Gale Force met her with a level of focused fury that awed and terrified her allies, both in Earthwatch and later in the pages of her own book.

Behind the Scenes

I mentioned that Nightguard didn’t make it out of the Plutonium Age, and now we know why. We’ve had a few supervillain relationships with heroes that end with redemption, so I wanted one to go very much the other direction. There are enough mercenaries around at this point that Vortex doesn’t need to stay one, and someone definitely decided to use her for a story about abusive and intolerant parents, and how you don’t actually need to forgive them. Sometimes you need to punch them until they are wind.

Vortex’s Unstable Augmentations feed well into being a Bruiser, but also put her at risk; when she hits Red, she might lose a chunk of her remaining health in one go, or she might just start rocking a lot of d12s! It’s a random chance that she can’t avoid taking and happens based on when she’s getting punched, which helps balance it not requiring an action.

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Interesting homebrew ability. Given that she’ll probably be somewhere down around 16 Health (depending on the H value, and 19 with the upgrade) when it triggers for the last time, d6 damage isn’t going to KO her but if she gets unlucky it might leave her a fair bit more fragile than she’d like.

Be extremely nasty in combo with allies who have healing tricks. Overpowered’s Rejoice probably wouldn’t be enough, but some minion or lieutenant ability could generate enough healing to matter. Definitely would think twice about giving that ability to a viallin with a Vehicle upgrade that’s sporting the Recovery ability, that one’s too good at offsetting that d6 irreducible.

Sadly not a legal approach IRL or there would probably be a lot fewer monsters in the world. Not much point in spending a big chunk of your life in prison in exchange for ending the person who ruined so much of it already.

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damn, wow, what a story! :open_mouth:

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Yeah, it’s a balanced trick for a villain on their own, but you’d really want to be careful including it in a group that has much healing going for them. And I agree, not good in combination with that vehicle power.

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Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah to those who celebrate either holiday! I expect it’ll be a quiet day, but our villain today is someone who has definitely crashed a holiday party dressed in a Santa costume at least once:

Rager

Real Name: Vondal Rehnd, First Appearance: Stargazers (Vol. 2) #9, May 2012

Approach: Bully, Archetype: Domain
Upgrade: Hardier Minions, Mastery: Partying
Status Dice: Based on the number of environment targets and/or challenges. 3+: d10. 1-2: d8. None: d6. Health: 55+5H (Upgraded 60+5H)

Qualities: Creativity d8, Technology d8, Party Animal d8
Powers: Vitality d10, Gadgets d8, Presence d8

Abilities:

  • Vibing (I): Ignore damage from an environment source during the environment’s turn
  • Party On, Dudes! [A]: Activate one of the environment’s twists in its current zone or
  • one zone closer to red.
  • Drink You Under The Table [A]: Roll any number of environment minion dice and Recover that much Health. Remove those minions.
  • Impromptu Mosh Pit [A]: Attack two nearby targets using Vitality, using your Max die against one and your Mid+Min against the other. If either target Defends against the Attack, the Defend works against both attacks.
  • The Good Stuff (I): Whenever you or your nearby allies Hinder, increase the penalty created by 1.
  • (U) Party Posse (I): W hen you enter the scene with minions, or deploy minions using your own abilities or the environment, increase them by one die size to a maximum of D12.
  • (U) Master of Partying (I): If you are in a situation where everything is spiraling out of
  • control, automatically succeed in an Overcome to accomplish a task by partying even harder.

Common Scene Elements:

  • Party People: d6 minions. When Party People Hinder nearby targets, they can make the penalty persistent and exclusive; if they do, the penalty also applies to them.
  • The Main Guests: d8 lieutenants. The Main Guests have +2 to saves as long as the party is going strong.
  • Party City: A chaotic environment filled with party gadgets, terrified and trapped ‘party-goers’, and collapsing infrastructure.

With the end of Dark Rivers and the return of the classic Champions of Freedom in 2010, Venture Comics entered a new era of deliberate classic callbacks alongside their more grim ongoing comics. After a pair of limited series covering Greenheart and Flatfoot’s returns to heroism, a new writing team pitched a comic that would focus on the hope that was at the heart of many of Venture’s classic stories, with a relaunch of the fairly popular Stargazers. The vision was for the series to reunite Drifter, Reverie, and Penitent as they dealt with threats from other worlds, magical and scientific, and mostly found ways to talk them down or resolve them without any deaths. Pushing hard, the writing team wanted to add a fourth hero to the set - Sunbeam, recovering from her traumatic experiences.

After some arguments, the new Stargazers were approved, and over the next four years they would provide some much-needed lightness in a setting that had begun to tilt dangerously dark. While the Stargazers faced many serious villains, they were able to talk some down, defeat others by turning their followers against them, or find non-violent solutions to their problems. Many of their opponents were seemingly-goofy or lighthearted foes, but with very real stakes and issues underlying their villainy.

Rager was one of the latter.

An upper-class heiress from a remote planet, Vondal Rehnd was disowned as a teenager by her aristocratic family after her wild ways wrecked a critically-important political event. In response, she looted their treasury, stole a capitol ship, and took off to see the stars, looking for new worlds and new experiences to enjoy. Unfortunately, Vondal also brought with her a very short-term outlook on life and a desire to bring the best alcohol, music, and raging special effects to wherever she went, and every planet that she landed on quickly turned into a violent disaster as her endless crew of hangers-on broke buildings, trashed ecosystems, and generally left a wave of ruin in their wake.

When Vondal came to Earth, she tried to set up shop in Santa Juanita, turning the entire city into one massive, enforced celebration on the beach. The Stargazers happened to respond, and quickly realized that if they turned this into a real fight, the whole city could be ruined. Instead, they carefully and cunningly sabotaged the party, swapping out alcohol for cheap juice, ruining the ambience, and convincing various partygoers to leave. By the time Rager realized what was happening, her party was ruined, and she had to leave in tears.

But if Rager had one virtue, it was persistence. She was going to hold a successful party on Earth, and it was going to be a party that would be renowned across the galaxy, and everyone would have fun or die trying! She became a recurring foe to the Stargazers, the Celestial Travelers, and other heroes as she picked quiet locations to turn into grand times, got into brawls with superheroes to pass the time, and generally partied like it was going out of style. She wasn’t exactly malicious, just angry at the world, prone to responding badly to people telling her what to do, and utterly terrified of what she would see if she looked in the mirror. Under her raging exterior was a simmering belief that without the distraction, without the glitz and the pizazz and the wild moments, her party people would leave and she would be alone. Nothing. Nobody. In a later appearance, Sunbeam managed to tease this fact out of her, and convinced her to move her currently-planned party to the Moon to protect an endangered wildlife habitat.

As a result, Rager ended up being a consistent, but not exactly world-threatening force. Instead, she was a pain in the ass who more than once accidentally brought near-destructive forces or creatures or technology to a planet, and had to be forced to leave before she accidentally got everyone killed.

Behind the Scenes

This character inspired by that one What If episode where Thor almost destroyed the Earth by throwing a party.

Rager is probably more threatening in her earliest appearances, and keeps getting watered down in terms of how much real threat she poses, but she never stops being a pain and she’s always good for “accidentally unearthed deadly X and used it as a party favour, whoops.”

Keen-eyed readers have likely noticed a rather surprising addition to the cast of Stargazers. As I was revising comics and creating new trends, I liked the idea of there being a throwback; a comic in the 2010s that was aggressively trying to hold on to positivity and hope. I put together a list of heroes to be involved in it, but they were missing a brick. And then I thought, wait, a brick character who’s all about hope? I have one of those and I said she wasn’t doing anything in the Plutonium Age! Looks like I lied. Sunbeam gets a promotion from D-Lister to C-Lister. I don’t think she does anything major between the end of Stargazers and the timeskip, but I can definitely see someone pushing to include her specifically for this sort of comic.

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Dr. Roach (II)

Real Name: Perry Planetta, First Appearance: (as size-changer) Gale Force #5, October 2014
Approach: Dampening, Archetype: Inventor
Upgrade: Power Dampening Field, Mastery: Conquest

Status Dice: (based on Inventions, bonuses, and penalties): 4+: d12, 2-3: d10, 1: d8, None: d6. Health: 20+5H
Qualities: Science d10, Banter d8, Ranged Combat d8, Make You Feel Small d8
Powers: Size Manipulation d10, Electricity d8, Inventions d8

Abilities:

  • Shrink Ray [A]: Hinder using Size Manipulation and use your Max die; that penalty is persistent and exclusive. As long as that penalty is on the target, reduce their highest power die of your choice by one die size. Attack using your Mid die.
  • Shocking Sting [A]: Attack using Electricity. Reduce all the target’s quality dice by one size until your next turn.
  • Bug-Out Bag [A]: Boost using Inventions and use your Max die, also Boost with your Mid die, and either make one of those bonuses persistent and exclusive or Attack with your Min die.
  • Defensive Swarm [R]: Discard one of your bonuses to Defend against all Attacks against you until your next turn, using that bonus value as the Defend result.

Common Scene Elements:

  • Giant Stinging Insects. D8 minions. When Giant Stinging Insects deal damage, they also apply a -1 penalty to the target.
  • Giant Rolling Pillbugs. D8 minions. As a reaction, a Giant Rolling Pillbug can redirect a nearby Attack to itself and Defend against it with its single status die.
  • Dr. Roach’s Lab. A lab filled with half-trained insects, half-finished inventions, and captured test subjects.

After graduating from Earthwatch in 2013, with her criminal record formally expunged and her status as a hero of Earth established, Gale Force became a globe-trotting hero, looking for problems that were too big for ordinary people to handle, and too small to draw the attention of the larger and more firmly-established teams. The stakes that she faced were neighborhoods under threat, tiny nations being pressured by arms dealers and super-scientists, and rogue agents oppressing ordinary people for their own benefit.

It probably wasn’t a surprise, therefore, that one of her most persistent threats became the supervillain known as Dr. Roach.

Dr. Roach was leaning into his insect theme. Along with his insect-controlling radio waves, he had recently developed formulas to change the size of living things. He used these to shrink his enemies and to grow massive insect bodyguards, and then used his forces to march into small towns on the edges of impovrished countries, looting the countryside and living a life of idle pleasure until there was nothing left, then moving on like a locust. His travels took him all over the world, and when he heard about a major situation brewing he would get out of town. When Gale Force faced off against him, he shrank her down to the size of a bug and thought the situation was dealt with.

It wasn’t. Bug-sized, Gale Force successfully made her way through Dr. Roach’s lab, destroying his gear and shrinking his insects back down to size. He fled before she could arrest him, and the two would continue to play cat and mouse games over the next several years, as he mixed and matched his new shrinking technology with his original insect-controlling beams to make life miserable for some new town, only for Gale Force to arrive and wreck his regime. He tried hiring mercenaries to fight her, joining forces with other heroes, and even faking a redemption arc, but none of it worked; their encounters always ended with his equipment wrecked, and the villain either escaping to lick his wounds or occasionally being believed dead in a lab explosion, only to return later.

Behind the Scenes

Gale Force probably doesn’t have a lot of new villains in her solo comic. She inherits a chunk of Earthwatch opponents, and with Covert Tactics over again their villains are in the wind and she’s the right person to face off against them, too. Which led me to wanting a new version of Doctor Roach, who plays with his insect theme in a different way.

There was a brief discussion about a hardcore, super-creepy Doctor Roach appearing in the 90s, and that may be a thing some day, but he’d be a flash in the pan villain whose new theme did not stick. Roach is just a petty asshole, and kind of a goofy one. Even in this form, I don’t think he ever actually kills anyone on-panel. He just makes people’s lives miserable and shrinks his enemies and puts them on display in little glass cases until Gale Force frees them.

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What, still no marijuana jokes?

Damn genre-savvy villains! :slight_smile:

Maybe take a cue from what they did to Killer Moth? He’s a similarly borderline goofy villain and about as close to a nemesis as Barbara Gordon Batgirl ever had, and the attempt to turn him into a giant rampaging bug-monster went over pretty poorly with fans. AFAIK he’s back to his old self with the insect-themed gadgets and wacky plans again, with his brief stretch in body-horror land left behind him.

You’d think with all the radioactive insects he works with Doctor Roach would get bitten sooner or later, and not everyone mutates as smoothly as Peter.

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