Part Two recounting characters and concepts for a superhero-verse created by an eight-year-old...
The Awesome Ones - from the previous post - are opposed on a global scale by an organization so evil, it can only be called --
THE LEAGUE OF SUPER-EVIL
Formed years ago as a foil for the Awesome Ones, the League of Super-Evil represents the ultimate villain team-up. Although its roster has varied across the years, its central objective has not: to destroy the Awesome Ones (and take over the world and stuff). A partial listing of their historic membership follows.
DEMON JOHN
The devil of the crossroads, promoted from tempting blues musicians, he now torments super-heroes. Naturally he is a rival of Saint Dozen. Demon John appears to be the big mystical baddie of this superverse.
MEXICO LEADER
Once a drug cartel enforcer, he manifested the ability to control minds and quickly rose in the ranks. He runs both the cartels and (secretly) the government of Mexico using a secret identity.
PURE GORILLA
An albino gorilla (I can't make this stuff up), Pure Gorilla wishes to destroy everything he considers impure. Which, of course, varies from day to day. Obsessive, super-strong, and very dangerous.
PURPLE TIGER
Some sort of martial artist/assassin type.
MISTER UNIVERSE
He fell from the sky in a meteor-ship! He has somewhat-vast cosmic powers! He shoots star-energy from his fingertips!
BROWN LANTERN
(This could have gone way worse than it did)
"He's like Green Lantern, only he's brown. And he summons dragons."
"Does he have Green Lantern's powers, but brown?"
"No, he has an old magic ring that's brown, which summons dragons."
"So he's nothing like Green Lantern at all."
"Well, his name is."
PERU MAN
Peru Man is from Peru (naturally); he can fly and shoot beams from his eyes and things. That's about it. Personally I imagine he has a mystic/ancient-alien origin and has Nazca lines all over his body like circuitry-tattoos or something, but that's all me, not the Boy. And, full disclosure - when we play superheroes lately, I am typically assigned to be Peru Man. Serious bias on my part.
IDAHO GHOST
"Idaho Ghost was a guy in Idaho who died but now he's a ghost and can walk through walls and levitate things with his mind but he's super angry about something so he does bad stuff."
SAINT ZERO
Saint Zero is the opposite number of Saint Dozen - a man who had all the potential for goodness sucked out of him. Other than being unkillable, he has no superpowers, but commits many crimes and hurts people. (The Boy is not familiar with the term "serial killer" but that's totally the vibe I get here).
KILLER SUNFLOWER
I don't have any details on this villain, but he/she/it sounds pretty horrifying.
FLUSHABLE BOY
A teenage lad who, via his remarkable ability to shapeshift into human waste and swim rapidly through water pipes, has made an underworld living as an assassin. Think about that for a second. Dude's an assassin who can come up through your toilet. Ass-assin, I guess.
Next time: the wild card teams! The nefarious New Land Gang, and the second-tier heroes of X-Encounter.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
A World of Heroes: Part One
Not much going on in Wampus lately, so let's talk about spandex.
For the past several weeks, each day the Boy has come up with one or more superheroes or villains, which he insists we write down for him, each added properly to one of the hero- or villain-teams he has invented. As weird as it all is - you can imagine the powers and names a nearly-nine-year-old might come up with, and I have so say I feel blessed only one character has fart-related powers - it's been intriguing watching him come up with things that are somewhat consistent, self-referential, etc. He builds on what has come before, and things have their own sense of logic.
At first I was going to take some of his more outlandish heroes and villains and give them a fatherly "touch-up", as we sometimes do for Wampus content, but I think this time maybe the Boy's creations should stand on their own. Thus, the beginning of this multi-post series covering his world of heroes. We start with the greatest hero-team of all, the Awesome Ones; but soon enough we'll hit the villains and cover the Boy's first attempts to play Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP). I have no idea if anyone but us will get any use out of these concepts, but it's certainly a walk through a kid's brain.
THE LEAGUE OF THE AWESOME ONES
The Awesome Ones are the world's premier superheroes, with a deep bench and a global reach. They have secret bases all over the world, and travel between them using high-tech rocket-planes. Below are listed a mixture of their current and original lineup.
SAINT DOZEN
The legendary Saint Dozen is perhaps the best-known and greatest-beloved superhero in the world. In addition to being a skilled athlete, martial artist, and detective, he has been gifted the special abilities of twelve different saints, which he may use one at a time. Saint Dozen can conjure flame, talk to animals, disappear and reappear [1], and heal others. When Saint Dozen is around, other heroes defer to his experience and leadership.
DOCTOR EMERGENCY
Dr. Emergency's arrival at the scene of a crisis is a welcome sight; she possesses the heightened and combined abilities of a medical doctor, paramedic, police officer, and firefighter.
RAY COWBOY
Once a sheriff in the wild west, Ray Cowboy was abducted by aliens who experimented on him and left him in stasis in a desert cave. When he awoke in the 21st-century, he had not aged, and had crazy robot eyes that gave him new senses and the ability to shoot death-rays from his eyes. Now he fights crime in the modern day and tries to solve the mystery of the aliens and why they altered him.
SOCCER BOY
Formerly a professional Ukrainian soccer player, Soccer Boy has the ability to conjure and shoot powerful soccer balls from his mouth.
DEFENSE PATRIOT
Defense Patriot was injured in Afghanistan and medically discharged from the Marine Corps, but became an FBI agent. While on an investigation, she witnessed the earthfall of the strange meteroid-ship which contained Mister Universe [2]. Bathed in the unearthly radiation and pollution of the meteroid gave Defense Patriot her armored skin and uncanny agility.
CAPTAIN AFRICA
Captain Africa is super-strong and can shoot strawberries from his eyes. Little else is known of this mysterious hero.
S-MAN
The "S" stands for "stretch". Every universe needs a stretchy guy.
BRITISH JAM
A bounty hunter, British Jam's ability to fly [3] has assisted him in tracking down many a criminal.
BURLINGTON
A young girl who knows many things and can think like a supercomputer. There was some sort of weird accident and the entire population of Burlington, Vermont was vaporized, but their memories and part of their brainpower were transferred to this girl who was at the epicenter of the event. Burlington speaks of herself in the third person plural, which is nice and creepy for a twelve-year-old.
KEY BOY
Born with the mystical ability to transform himself into a key which matches any door he touches.
Next Time: we meet the world-beating, villainous membership of the League of Super-Evil!
---
[1] I am reliably informed that this power is not invisibility. It sounds more like a delayed teleportation the way the kid describes it.
[2] A rather nasty villain. We'll get to him in Part Two.
[3] Flight powers are waaay underrepresented in this universe relative to your bog-standard comic assumptions. So far, anyway. For all I know, tomorrow he'll come up with eight dudes who can fly.
For the past several weeks, each day the Boy has come up with one or more superheroes or villains, which he insists we write down for him, each added properly to one of the hero- or villain-teams he has invented. As weird as it all is - you can imagine the powers and names a nearly-nine-year-old might come up with, and I have so say I feel blessed only one character has fart-related powers - it's been intriguing watching him come up with things that are somewhat consistent, self-referential, etc. He builds on what has come before, and things have their own sense of logic.
At first I was going to take some of his more outlandish heroes and villains and give them a fatherly "touch-up", as we sometimes do for Wampus content, but I think this time maybe the Boy's creations should stand on their own. Thus, the beginning of this multi-post series covering his world of heroes. We start with the greatest hero-team of all, the Awesome Ones; but soon enough we'll hit the villains and cover the Boy's first attempts to play Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP). I have no idea if anyone but us will get any use out of these concepts, but it's certainly a walk through a kid's brain.
THE LEAGUE OF THE AWESOME ONES
The Awesome Ones are the world's premier superheroes, with a deep bench and a global reach. They have secret bases all over the world, and travel between them using high-tech rocket-planes. Below are listed a mixture of their current and original lineup.
SAINT DOZEN
The legendary Saint Dozen is perhaps the best-known and greatest-beloved superhero in the world. In addition to being a skilled athlete, martial artist, and detective, he has been gifted the special abilities of twelve different saints, which he may use one at a time. Saint Dozen can conjure flame, talk to animals, disappear and reappear [1], and heal others. When Saint Dozen is around, other heroes defer to his experience and leadership.
DOCTOR EMERGENCY
Dr. Emergency's arrival at the scene of a crisis is a welcome sight; she possesses the heightened and combined abilities of a medical doctor, paramedic, police officer, and firefighter.
RAY COWBOY
Once a sheriff in the wild west, Ray Cowboy was abducted by aliens who experimented on him and left him in stasis in a desert cave. When he awoke in the 21st-century, he had not aged, and had crazy robot eyes that gave him new senses and the ability to shoot death-rays from his eyes. Now he fights crime in the modern day and tries to solve the mystery of the aliens and why they altered him.
SOCCER BOY
Formerly a professional Ukrainian soccer player, Soccer Boy has the ability to conjure and shoot powerful soccer balls from his mouth.
DEFENSE PATRIOT
Defense Patriot was injured in Afghanistan and medically discharged from the Marine Corps, but became an FBI agent. While on an investigation, she witnessed the earthfall of the strange meteroid-ship which contained Mister Universe [2]. Bathed in the unearthly radiation and pollution of the meteroid gave Defense Patriot her armored skin and uncanny agility.
CAPTAIN AFRICA
Captain Africa is super-strong and can shoot strawberries from his eyes. Little else is known of this mysterious hero.
S-MAN
The "S" stands for "stretch". Every universe needs a stretchy guy.
BRITISH JAM
A bounty hunter, British Jam's ability to fly [3] has assisted him in tracking down many a criminal.
BURLINGTON
A young girl who knows many things and can think like a supercomputer. There was some sort of weird accident and the entire population of Burlington, Vermont was vaporized, but their memories and part of their brainpower were transferred to this girl who was at the epicenter of the event. Burlington speaks of herself in the third person plural, which is nice and creepy for a twelve-year-old.
KEY BOY
Born with the mystical ability to transform himself into a key which matches any door he touches.
Next Time: we meet the world-beating, villainous membership of the League of Super-Evil!
---
[1] I am reliably informed that this power is not invisibility. It sounds more like a delayed teleportation the way the kid describes it.
[2] A rather nasty villain. We'll get to him in Part Two.
[3] Flight powers are waaay underrepresented in this universe relative to your bog-standard comic assumptions. So far, anyway. For all I know, tomorrow he'll come up with eight dudes who can fly.
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