fantastic addition
Humbug definitely seems to be more of a Dr. Roach than a Scrooge, despite the name. But maybe he was visited by three ghosts in the night, and that’s what made him turn good.
He is undeniably a bit roach-ish, but I couldn’t for the life of me recall his name way back when you put Doctor R up. Got hung up on Goldbug, but that’s an entirely different technological vaguely insect-themed Marvel D-lister who started off trying to frame Luke Cage for robbery.
Also a Transformer, but that’s a whole other topic.
Bravo
Real Name: Varies, First Appearance: Madame Liberty #160, April 1955
Lieutenant Type: Enemy
Die Size: d10
Motive: Conquest, Approach: Physical
Traits:
- Riposte: As a reaction to an Attack from a nearby foe, Bravo may roll a d6. He both Defends himself and Attacks a nearby foe with the result.
Madame Liberty was one of the few superhero comics in the Venture line to survive the implementation of the Comics Code, and during the period of 1955-1957, it struggled on unfamiliar ground. For the most part, writers fell back on re-using the same handful of major villains that were known and popular to readers, along with a handful of Soviet spies and double agents, but there were a few attempts to create new, flowery villains who could oppose her without running afoul of the new Code.
Bravo was possibly the only success introduced in this period. The first Bravo, Antonio Valiente was a fighter at heart, a man who wished to prove his mettle and take what he needed. A young man when Italy was freed from fascism, he had no real understanding of the costs that had been paid to earn his freedom, only of the shame that he felt his country had suffered when they relied on foreigners to fight their war for them.
Determined to prove himself, Antonio attached himself to the Soviet cause in Eastern Europe, not out of any particular love for Communism but simply because he saw it as the next war to be fought. Alongside other street toughs and low-level criminals, he terrorized small towns, creating chaos so that the Soviets could move in and offer ‘protection’. Madame Liberty heard about his gang, and successfully connected him to the Soviets, saving the small nation he was terrorizing and allowing them to keep Russian forces from occupying them.
This was not the end of Bravo, however. Antonio Valiente died in the chaos, but a new Bravo emerged not long afterwards, operating on the same playbook; destabilize a region, kill key authority figures, and push the locals into the arms of the Soviets. When Madame Liberty unmasked this second Bravo, she realized that he was a Russian agent, trained by the same handlers who had trained Antonio. She was thus prepared when the third Bravo appeared not long afterwards.
The Bravos were not, as a rule, long-lived, but they were interchangeable. Heavily indoctrinated and intensely trained, each of them used the same combat style and the same infiltration playbook. When one fell, another was soon ready to take his place, and each Bravo behaved as though he was the one that Madame Liberty had fought before. He would become a persistent threat to her throughout the years to come.
Behind the Scenes:
We end the Golden Age with something a little odd, but not entirely unusual. Bravo is a singular supervillain, but not a singular person; you could in theory have two running around at once, if one stayed alive past the point that his successor was ready to be deployed. Later on, you could also have former Bravos acting as minor support characters, a Bravo developing real powers and becoming something more dangerous, and so on.
Madame Liberty
Real Name: Marianne Leblanc, First Appearance: (New Style) Dark Rivers (Vol. 2) #1, Sep 2006
Background: Adventurer, Power Source: Multiverse, Archetype: Shadow
Personality: Decisive, Principles: Liberty, Stealth
Status Dice: Green d8, Yellow d8, Red d8. Health: 28 [Green 28-22, Yellow 21-11, Red 10-1]
Qualities: Banter d10, Stealth d10, Finesse d10, Acrobatics d8, Otherworldly Mythos d8, Hero Of A Thousand Faces d8
Powers: Shapeshifting d8, Intuition d8, Agility d8, Presence d8, Invisibility d6
Green Abilities:
- Slippery Spy [A]: Attack using Stealth. Remove one physical bonus or penalty, Hinder a target using your Min die, or maneuver to a new location in your environment.
- Heroic Evasion [R]: When you would be dealt damage, roll a d4 while in the Green zone, d6 while in the Yellow, or d8 while in Red. Reduce the damage you take by the value rolled. Attack another target with that roll.
- Principle of Liberty [A]: Overcome in a situation where you are restricted or bound and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point
- Principle of Stealth [A]: Overcome to infiltrate somewhere or avoid detection and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
Yellow Abilities:
- Liberty’s Need [A]: Boost yourself using Intuition. Use your Max die. That bonus is persistent and exclusive. Then Attack using your Min die.
- Lost in the Crowd [A]: Hinder multiple targets using Shapeshifting. Use your Mid die for one and your Min for the rest.
- Careful Tricks [A]: Attack or Overcome using Finesse. Boost yourself using your Min die.
Red Abilities
- Heroic Surge [A]: Make a basic action using Banter. Use your Max die. All other heroes who take the same basic action on their turn against the same target receive a Boost from your Mid+Min dice.
- Shadowy Resolution [A]: Overcome using Stealth. Use your Mix+Min dice. Hinder all nearby opponents with your Mid die.
Out
- Choose an ally. Until your next turn, that ally may reroll one of their dice by using a Reaction.
And here is our final Madame Liberty!
This is the version of Madame Liberty who operates starting in Dark Rivers; over the course of the third volume of Liberty’s Dream she’s still coming to terms with having her memories of her old life returned to her, and her powers are sort of fluctuating between the extradimensional psychic ones and her old physical shapeshifting. When Dark Rivers launches, the writers decide to properly return her to her roots, leaving a few bits of the Iron Age version. But she’s been a hero for a century now, she’s more of an adventurer and she’s got a lot of experience in otherworldly realms. She’s the proper team leader for Dark Rivers going forward.
The final Champions of Truth Madame Liberty probably shifts between this version and the Golden Age version, depending on what people want to accentuate. For the most part, her Iron Age version is wiped out by Shatterpoint.
That’s 28-22, 21-11,10-0 there FWIW.
She’s certainly accumulated a suitably convoluted continuity over the years, hasn’t she? What was she, the fourth character in this project?
Yep! Fourth character, and all of the three before her had breaks somewhere. Skybreaker became a different Skybreaker, Penitent was gone for decades and then re-introduced as the original’s daughter, and even Flatfoot spent most of a decade offline. (On top of that, unlike Flatfoot and Skybreaker, Madame Liberty isn’t depowered in the mid-2000s because she’s out of the Champions of Truth in that time.)
I think Madame Liberty’s on the right level of continuity nonsense; she’s not at a Power Girl or Hawkman level, but she’s had a few big shifts.
Ye gods, those two. There’s no need to be an overachiever in some categories.
It’s only a matter of time before some writer tries to tie their disparate backstories together and make them a couple or something.
Sunbeam
Real Name: Adeya Talibi, First Appearance: Champions of Truth #423, Jan 2008
Background: Unremarkable, Power Source: Alien, Archetype: Flyer
Personality: Jovial, Principles: Hero, Hope
Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10. Health: 30 [Green 30-23, Yellow 22-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Insight d10, Investigation d8, Close Combat d8, Medicine d8, Unshakeable Optimism d8
Powers: Flight d10, Presence d10, Strength d8, Speed d8, Awareness d8
Green Abilities:
- Fly Through [A]: Hinder multiple targets using Flight. Apply your Min die to each of them.
- Heavy Hitter [A]: Attack using Close Combat. Defend against all Attacks against you using your Min die until your next turn.
- Principle of the Hero [A]: Overcome in a situation in which innocent people are in immediate danger and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
- Principle of Hope [A]: Overcome a dire situation where your encouragement prevents demoralization and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
Yellow Abilities:
- Whallop [A]: Attack up to three targets using Flight. Apply your Min die to each of them.
- Ray of Sunshine [A]: Boost all nearby allies using Presence. Use your Max+Mid dice. Hinder yourself with your Min die.
- Stand Firm [R]: When you are Attacked at close range, Defend yourself by rolling your single Strength die.
Red Abilities
- Power of the Sun [A]: Attack using Flight. Use your Max die. Then, Hinder that target using your Mid+Min dice.
- Do The Right Thing [R]: When an opponent Attacks, you may become the target of that Attack and Defend by rolling your single Red zone die.
- Shining Beacon (I): When taking any action using Presence, you may reroll your Min die before determining effects.
Out
- Defend an ally by rolling your single Insight die.
Now that she’s in several comics and seems to have escaped D-List status, Sunbeam is getting promoted to a full character sheet! I’m kind of going to be cheating in the Plutonium Age and including the other Champions of Freedom, despite their ultimate D-List status, because (a) they’re kind of important to the comic line and more importantly (b) I don’t want to have to write up another three heroes for the main book. I don’t want everyone in the Plutonium age to be a returning character, and I’ve already got four (if we count Golden Retriever, which I do.) The new setup is that I’m writing Stormrider, Gutterpunk, and Sunbeam as heroes, with Greensleeves, Netizen, and Mathcore as supports. This fits who takes up the most space in the comic, and means that I don’t have to have Sunbeam’s character writeup explain absolutely everyone. It also means that I can use character writeups to discuss some of the other storylines taking place in this time, and what happens to the Champions of Liberty while they’re depowered.
In the meantime, Sunbeam! Despite having the same powers as Hyperstar, she plays very differently. In Green she’s hesitant, using wide-area Hinders or defensive attacks. In yellow, she can give big boosts at her own expense or hit a few people, and is even better at defense. In Red she’s pushed too far, and absolutely unleashes on someone, but she’s still got that unshakeable brightness.
Sunbeam is recruited to the Champions of Freedom and spends two years there. Then the Champions are mostly wiped out in 2010. A year later, she is added to the Stargazers lineup more or less on a whim, and proves more popular there than she was as a replacement Hyperstar. Stargazers ends in late 2015, and once again she’s out for a year, before returning as part of Brave New World alongside Paradox, [TO BE REVEALED], and [TO BE REVEALED]. That carries her into the Diamond Age, where she has the one-shot I mentioned before, “Dr. Sunbeam: Talk To Me”, and is also part of Earthwatch’s broader supporting cast in a role that hasn’t been disclosed but maybe you can guess.
The Principle of Hope is just the Principle of Levity, but with encouraging words instead of jokes. The twists are pretty much the same.
Is that a jab at her weight? Mean.
What was her retcon used for?
Not a jab, just a reference to her being a large brick character. She’s not ashamed of it.
That’s… a good question. I think maybe nothing. I should fix that by giving her a third Red ability.
Gold Guardian
Real Name: Ernest Newton, First Appearance: Venture Into The Unknown #17, May 1959
Lieutenant Type: Ally
Die Size: d8
Relation: Romantic Option, Approach: Physical
Traits:
- Flashy Distraction: When Gold Guardian Boosts himself, he may Defend a nearby ally with a value equal to the bonus created.
- Golden Armor: Gold Guardian has +1 to all damage saves.
Not every hero in Venture into the Unknown was popular enough for their own title. Heroes such as Professor Integrity and Europa struggled to sell issues, and Manzetta was always on the lookout for ways to use less popular characters in minor roles. This usually didn’t go anywhere, but it served the Gold Guardian well.
Ernest Newton was an awkward young man who was bathed in cosmic energies while star-watching one night. When he called upon those energies, he swelled with power and became a large, strong, nigh-invulnerable man clad in white and gold armor. Filled with confidence from the cosmic forces, Ernest became Gold Guardian, his personality and attitude boisterous and brave, compared to his timid, almost cowardly civilian persona. Ernest was head over heels for his friend Paula, but to his dismay she only had eyes for Gold Guardian.
Gold Guardian failed to be popular enough for his own title, but his two appearances were well-received and Glenn Cochrane scooped him up in late 1960 for a subplot in which he arrived in Grovedale and struck up a romance with Rhonda Randall, flattering her and taking her out on dates exclusively as his superheroic alter ego. Cooper was jealous of Rhonda’s time and affection going elsewhere, but she was happy and he stewed in silence instead of trying to interfere. Ultimately, Rhonda decided that Gold Guardian was a sweet guy but ‘wasn’t her type’, and the hero left Grovedale in mid-1961.
This probably would have been the last of Gold Guardian, consigning him to becoming a minor trivia question for Venture Comics fans… but in 1962, a writer struggling with subplots decided on a whim to include the Gold Guardian as a supporting character to a Greenheart story in Venture into the Unknown #45, in which he saved Ginnie Turner from falling rubble, promptly fell in love with her, and went out on a date with her while Greenheart tried to keep her friend’s date from being interrupted by the villain of the issue. The issue was well-received, and opened the door for a running joke in the Venture universe. Gold Guardian would appear in someone else’s comics doing honest heroics, fall head over heels for a supporting character, and spend the next few issues romantically involved with them before the relationship fell apart. He was superficially charming, but was so caught up in not revealing his awkward alter ego that he would end up self-sabotaging, walking off dejectedly only to fall for a new lady in a new comic a year later. Other heroes found him endearing but slightly exasperating, like an over-eager puppy that you don’t want to scold, and he was just skilled enough as a hero to be an amusing aside who never wore out his welcome in any given title.
Behind the Scenes:
I was a little surprised to discover that Gold Guardian was free for me to use! DC Comics very briefly had a Golden Guardian, but only for a few issues, and no sign of one in Marvel.
Anyway, I love this guy. I wanted to have a support character who’s just a small-time superhero that appears places and never really has his own comic, and I got “Romantic Option” and thought, that’s interesting, but for who? And then… well, this happened. I’m continuing my march towards defining every one of the first fifty issues of Venture into the Unknown, which is very funny to me.
I think Marvel stayed away from it in part because of DC legal and the fact that Kirby created both the just plain Guardian (in 1942, with Joe Simon - sound familiar?) and years later, his empowered Cadmus clone Golden Guardian for his Jimmy Olsen run.
The “romantic loser” thing is a perfect fit for the time period, at least going by the way Superman, Lois and even Jimmy were incessantly pestered by various wanna-be love interests throughout the Sixties - always dealing with them in the most respectful and mature way possible, of course. Because “emotional maturity” and the Superman family go together like sewage and ice cream in that era.
Combining a small army of implausible suitors into a single hard-luck Ernest seems like it might be for the best and having him stick to annoying supporting cast seems like it might be for the best, really.
The Dogcatcher
Real Name: Yancy Lewis**, First Appearance:** Flatfoot Adventures #206, Aug 1959
Lieutenant Type: Enemy
Die Size: d12
Motive: Personal, Approach: Raw Power
Traits:
- Give A Whistle: As an action, the Dogcatcher may roll his status die and create that many d4 “Hypnotized Pet” minions. If he creates at least three minions in this way, step down his status die.
In 1959, as sales of Venture Comics exploded, there was a brief period in the writer’s room during which the number of issues being written outstripped the number of writers being hired. Overworked and exhausted, writers threw whatever idea they came up with onto the page, without taking the time to carefully develop them. It was just comics, after all. No one was going to care ten years from now. Most of these ideas were serviceable enough for an issue, keeping readers happy, but the characters introduced never endured. But others proved to be more enduring, either because they were impressive, or because their gimmick was so ludicrous and their plots so comical that they became welcome punchlines for years to come. The Dogcatcher was one of the latter.
Growing up, Yancy Lewis was never allowed a pet. He was a sickly child, and his parents were very busy. Yancy couldn’t say why this mattered so much to him, but it did. He loved animals, and animals loved him. One day, upon witnessing a small terrier being mistreated by its owner, something in Yancy broke, and he let out a whistle that caused the dog to break away from its leash and run to him. Overwhelmed by the love of an animal, Yancy made it his mission to acquire as many strays and mistreated animals as possible, creating a lair full of pampered pets.
But pampered pets were expensive, and Yancy didn’t have a job. So he hit on a simple plan – he would have his loyal friends take valuables from the rich, sneaking into mansions and banks at night and stealing jewelry and cash for Yancy to sell to keep his menagerie in the comforts to which they were accustomed. As the Dogcatcher, Yancy launched an unprecedented crime wave across Ferrisville, and when Flatfoot responded he found himself hip-deep in angry dogs and cats, having to be careful to fend them off without hurting them. Flatfoot was able to defeat the Dogcatcher and send him to the doghouse, while finding new homes for the pets that Dogcatcher had controlled.
Dogcatcher was sympathetic, hilarious, and incredibly powerful, so it wasn’t a surprise when he began to appear more often. Usually, he was working as a hired hand for a gang of thieves, gathering new pets and getting the money to take care of them. The animals that thronged around him made him difficult to fight safely, and he was certainly strong enough to go toe-to-toe with serious heroes, but his incredibly narrow goals and attitude meant that he was a perennial second-stringer, a down-on-his-luck guy without much malice in him, but who would always come back to steal more for his pets.
Behind the Scenes:
I may have stolen this idea from an episode of Moon Girl, although the actual gimmick is different.
The Dogcatcher is a profoundly silly lieutenant with a profoundly massive status die that reflects the fact that he’s got a bunch of cute animals around him to make him hard to attack and add some bite to his bark. He’s going to try to create an absolute swarm of ridiculously tiny minions who will gnaw at you, incidentally dropping his own die down to the point where he’s reasonably fightable. I’ve only known him for five minutes and if anything happens to him I will riot. It’s entirely possible that if this series was being developed in a different order he would have ended up on Earthwatch instead of Wicker, but instead he’s just going to kind of hang around forever and be a big goofball.
Keep him well clear of the edgy parts of the 90s if you want this guy to survive. He won’t last long in a decade that brought us the (thankfully defunct) Dogwelder. Some deranged writer would probably decide it would be “fun” to do a story where he and his pets all wind up with rabies.
Actually, maybe just keep him off stage post-2000 too. Still haven’t forgotten that whole fiasco with Wonder Dog slaughtering Marvin and maiming Wendy in 2006. The edgelord garbage never has really gone away.
kind of reminds me of Dober Man from Golden Age Champions.