The History of Venture Comics, Pt. 2: Places to Go, Supervillains To See

Greetings and salutations, comics fans!

This is the second thread of my increasingly convoluted and wild project, The History of Venture Comics! About two and a half years ago, I started designing an entire fictional publishing company set in the world of the Sentinel Comics RPG, Venture Comics. For those who aren’t aware of it, SCRPG is a fast-paced, action-oriented superhero RPG that uses the setting of the card game “Sentinels of the Multiverse”, which has been dormant for the past few years but might be spooling up again in the near future. Fingers crossed.

Using a series of randomizers and a lot of work, I put together a timeline of the comics running from the Golden Age of Comics all the way through to 2019, through the creation of the setting’s biggest heroes and villains.

Then I added a bunch of D-Listers to fill the series out. Then I went back and added even more heroes and villains, along with a number of key supporting characters and minor lieutenants.

Now I’m moving into the second phase of the project. Over the next two and a half years, I’m putting together three more supplements for Venture Comics: a large collection of environments, fleshed-out information on various supervillain teams and organizations, and finally a supplement fleshing out the mid-tier characters and events of the setting.

(Some people will note that I had mentioned a possible Diamond Age mini-supplement in the past; it’s been absorbed into the other projects in order to let them be a bit more fleshed out.)

But first, I wanted to make sure that people coming to this massive project now can still parse what the hell is going on.

If you want to skip over all of the lengthy development, you can go to my Itch page and find four PDFs, each of which has ninety characters for SCRPG and the finalized timelines of the various ages of Venture Comics. These books are all available as free downloads:

1. Venture Comics: The Classic Years (1939 - 1969)

2. Venture Comics: The Dark Ages (1970 - 2001)

3. Venture Comics: The Digital Revolution (2002 - 2022)

4. Venture Comics: Deep Cuts

If you want to follow along and see the whole development process, the first thread of Venture Comics is still live! You can find various key points as follows:

1. The start of the thread here.
2. The Golden Age
3. The Silver Age
4. The Bronze Age
5. The Iron Age
6. The Plutonium Age
7. The Diamond Age
8. D-Listers
9. Problems and Retcons
10. Extra Characters
11. Lieutenants
12. Deep Cuts

And if you’d like to see the other site,
here is a link to the same thread on rpgnet, with different comics!

Whew! And that takes us up to the present. The next post will unveil the setup for On Location…

Alright, here we go!

Starting on Monday, we’re going to work our way chronologically through a whopping fifty-four environments, eight to ten for each age ranging from 1940 to 2026, because that’s the sort of person that I am. I’m once again using a homemade randomizer, although I reserve the right to put my finger on the scales whenever there’s a particular Venture Comics event I want to run.

My randomizer uses a set of rolls of d8s, d10s, d12s, and d20s, in three stages.

First, roll 2d8 and 2d10 to determine the environment’s Type and Power. Choose whichever combination of results is most interesting; if you roll doubles, choose either that number or the next highest one on the list. . The options are as follows:

Type

1. Heroic Location
2. Standard Location
3. Strange Location
4. Dangerous Location
5. Standard Event
6. Quirky Event
7. Dangerous Event
8. Something Unique

Power

1. d8 + d8 + d6
2. d8 + d8 + d8
3. d10 + d8 + d6
4. d10 + d8 + d8
5. d10 + d8 + d8
6. d10 + d10 + d6
7. d10 + d10 + d8
8. d12 + d8 + d6
9. d12 + d8 + d8
10. d12 + d10 + d8

In general, I will tend to attach higher Powers to the more dangerous locations, so that I can generally divide environments into Standard or Hostile.

Next, running through Green, Yellow, and Red zones in order, roll 3d20 and 2d12, assigning two d20s to Minor Twists and one d12 to a Major Twist. The minor Twists are:

And the Major Twists are:

Our environments will be set up with eighteen environments each for the Golden/Silver Ages, the Bronze/Iron Age, and the Plutonium/Diamond Ages. Within each section, I can choose a given Type up to three times, and a given Power, Minor Twist, or Major Twist up to twice. If I roll a result that’s no longer available, I take the next one down the list.

This is a refined version of the randomizer I built back in the day, and I think it’ll create some interesting concepts. Tune in Monday to see how it begins…

(nitpick: dormant for one year exactly)

Huh? A “d20”? What’s that?

Ehn, that depends on your definition of “dormant”.

The last sourcebook released in 2022, which is where I’m counting from. I know that two one-shots were released after that, but I consider the line as a whole pretty dormant during that time.

The most recent one-shot released in August 2024, which is almost two years ago.

The company was shut down about a year ago, and revived a few weeks ago.

Suggestion: Interested folks might want to bookmark the url at that link, which connects to the start of the parallel rpg.net thread that this one mirrors. It’s a little older than the thread here, has very different comments from the readers over there, and just having it saved will give you a handy backup to the original thread if something untoward should happen to this thread (or the whole GTG forum) - something that isn’t beyond the realm of possibility even now.

Well, you take a d10, then you flip a coin and if it’s heads, you add ten to the die roll for a result of 11-20. Otherwise you just use the roll as-is for a 1-10.

If you don’t have a coin I feel bad for your financial situation and/or lack of pockets, but you could just roll another die of any size (or even the same d10 you just rolled, if you trust yourself to remember what that first roll was) and on even results you add ten to the original d10 result, while on odds you add nothing.

I hear they actually sell twenty-sided dice, but of course that’s just corporate trickery. Biggest scam in gaming, the d20.

Oops.

This is the endless pitfall of posting to two sites, that was actually supposed to link to the GTG thread. I have now edited the list to include links to both sites for the curious.

The other thread started out a little earlier - October 20th, 2023, whereas the one here launched sometime in November. All of the content posts are duplicated between both sites so you don’t get anything new out of reading their twins, but of course the comments (and FrivYeti’s responses to them) are quite different. They’re intersting to compare and contrast, and you don’t have to register or log in to read there.

Fair, I was thinking of the whole company, not the RPG line, that’s my bad.

I assume you’d loop back to the top if the bottom of a given list was all used up? Same with (say) rolling double 10s for Power, you’d choose between 1 and 10 there?

Yeah, that’s my usual go-to for hitting the end of a list.

And speaking of the end… it’s time for the beginning! (Sometimes the transition sentence is a little rough. But not as rough as…)

The Hellish Halls of Zabaranth

Halls of Zabaranth600×400 138 KB

Type: Strange Location
Key Appearance: Campfire Terrors #17, July 1940

Traits:

• Twisted Geometry d12
• Blistering Chill d8
• Haunting Cries d6

Green Zone

Minor Twists

• Imploding Stonework: A wall collapses, falling upwards in a clattering storm. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target who is in the open with the Mid die.
• Curious Crawler: A demonic creature crawls into the Halls from the frigid waste beyond. Roll the environment dice and create a minion with a status die equal to the size of the Max die.

Major Twist

• Arctic Gusts: A blast of arctic wind slams through the area. Roll the environment dice; Hinder one target with the Mid die and Attack another target with the Min die.

Yellow Zone

Minor Twists

• Infernal Temptation: A rush of hatred and corrosive power floods the area. Roll the environment dice and Boost all targets with the Mid die. A hero who uses this bonus should consider having it create narrative complications the next time they take a twist.
• It’s Reggie! Reggie the newsboy has followed the heroes into the Halls, and is already in danger! Create a new challenge:
  Save Reggie!
  If the scene enters the Red Zone before this challenge is resolved, Reggie is lost in the Halls forever.

Major Twist

• Demonic Incursion: Drawn by the scent of human souls, demons swarm into the area. Roll the environment dice, and create a number of d10 “Ice Demon” minions equal to the Mid die.

Red Zone

Minor Twists

• Rocky Road: The Halls twist and shake, throwing up barriers between the combatants. Roll the environment dice and Defend every target present with the Max die. Each target is Defended once.
• Cold Comfort: The cold of the Halls settles into the bones of the combatants. Roll the environment dice and Hinder two characters, one with the Mid die and one with the Min die. These penalties are persistent and exclusive.

Major Twist

• Flickering Portals: The realm does not wish for you to be present, and begins to shake and collapse. Advance the scene tracker. If the scene ends without the PCs succeeding at their goals or escaping, everyone is ejected from the Halls into the frozen wastes beyond.

The Penitent’s first few appearances took place strictly in the mundane world. While he battled against demonic cultists and dark magicians, these battles took place in small towns and hidden alleys, not in stranger realms. But it wasn’t long before his creators, emboldened by the popular support for his character, decided to start trying stranger things. The first such place were the Hellish Halls of Zabaranth.

In Campfire Terrors #17, the Penitent arrived at a college where a group of researchers were intended to use a collection of ancient relics to pierce the veil between worlds. They held the Hand of Zabaranth, which they believed would allow them to freeze space itself and open a pathway. Unfortunately, they were right. As the Penitent arrived to stop them, their ritual was complete and they were pulled into a frozen mirror of the college, its towers twisted and tucked within each other. Icy demons stalked the halls, sniffing the warmth of human blood.

The Penitent quickly entered the Halls of Zabaranth behind the would-be explorers, defeating the first demons who threatened them. But his efforts to lead them back to safety were quickly complicated when he discovered that he had been followed. In Campfire Terrors #16, he had saved a young newsboy named Reggie from being sacrificed to the Cult of the Blood Tide. Unbeknownst to the Penitent, Reggie was a clever and alert young lad, who successfully tracked his saviour and came to thank him and offer his aid. Instead, he was sucked into the portal behind the Penitent and lost in the Halls himself.

Over the course of the issue, the Penitent was forced to shepherd the academics to safety while also tracking down and saving Reggie, who in turn saved the Penitent when a particularly powerful ice demon ambushed him and knocked away the protective amulet he had been using to ward off the region’s bitter chill. Reggie risked himself to recover it, and soon enough everyone was back in their own world. The Penitent claimed the Hand of Zabaranth from the chastened explorers, and made them swear never to seek out dangerous magic again.

He tried to extract the same promise from Reggie, who cheerfully told him that he would see the Penitent the next time he was in the area. Reggie would go on to appear in roughly a quarter of the Penitent’s stories, staying carefully out of the darker or more brutal tales in favour of the ones in which the Penitent was able to save everyone.

Like many of the Penitent’s early stories, Zabaranth wasn’t intended to re-appear. It was just a strange demonic place that allowed for both complicated art and haphazard layout. But the storyline was popular enough for the frozen realm to appear a few more times over the course of the 1940s, and the Hand of Zabaranth became one of the relics that the Penitent drew on when he needed to cast spells of cold.

In 1954, the realm vanished along with Campfire Terrors, but it returned in Vanguards #156 as part of the return of Ignition. Here, the realm’s nature was retconned; it had once been an ordinary dimension until it was invaded by the Empress of Ash, and the inhabitants had worked a vast magic to expel all flame from their realm to defeat her. They were successful, but the cost was their civilization and their natures, turning into frosted creatures that hunted for heat to remove from their home. When the Vanguards successfully lured Ignition into Zabaranth, her magical flame was quickly extinguished, forcing her to flee. After that, the realm would appear periodically, usually when someone needed some ice demons in a hurry.

Behind The Scenes:

And here we go!

I had planned to give our first strange location to the Penitent, but I didn’t expect it this quickly. There’s some symbolism to the first hero getting the first environment. It works out well, fleshing out a bit of his stuff while also being very Golden Age.

Red zone scene tracker advance is just plain mean, but I suppose you can always just opt not to use it. Good place to have an immunity to or inversion of Cold damage, although it won’t help with everything.

I’m sure Penitent is far too serious and responsible a hero to ever use the Hand of Zabaranth to chill his drinks or temporarily avoid having to pay for refrigerator repairs. One does wonder if the Hand’s former owner/operator occasionally comes looking to reclaim it - or if it belonged to someone like Marvel’s Equinox and there’s an Other Hand of Zabarath that does Fire-related shenanigans.

Amusingly, my first random roll for an environment seems to have duplicated quite a few of your results. I shall have to consider how to approach that.

Given that his original deal was “hey kids, don’t use dark magic or you’ll end up like me”, yeah, probably not. That seems more like something Heretic would do if she got hold of it.

It definitely didn’t happen in the Golden Age. Most likely, the Hand was lost when the Penitent sacrificed himself. There might be a storyline in the Iron Age in which the second Penitent goes around reclaiming her father’s artifacts from people who have found and misused them, though.

You know, it took me an embarrassingly long time to register that this is probably an ice cream flavor reference. I’m going shopping tomorrow and will buy a quart as penance.

So I made a little error. I was so busy rushing around on Friday that I forgot to actually upload the environment I’d written up the day before.

That means we get three environments this week to get us back on schedule. I sure hope you don’t want to riot over it!

The Rationing Riots

Riot600×400 78.8 KB

Type: Standard Event
Key Appearance: Cryptic Trails, July-Sep 1942

Traits:

• Aura of Discontent d10
• Crowds of Civilians d10
• Narrow Streets d6

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Drunker Rioters: Part of the crowd turns violent. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Mid die.
• Sneaky Urchins: A group of local street kids are using the riots to grab anything they can! Roll the environment dice and Hinder all non-environment targets with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Frustrated Cabbie: A cab driver makes the mistake of trying to force his taxi through the crowd and hits someone. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Max die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• The Riot Spreads: The crowd gets increasingly out of control! Roll the environment dice and create a number of d6 “Rowdy Rioter” minions equal to the Mid die.
• Shoved Into A Corner: The crowd is trying to get to the storefront before supplies run out, and they’re not paying attention to who’s in their way! Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Max die.

Major Twist

• Formorian Influence: The Formorians show their hand more openly, stirring the rioters to hatred and directing them at their foes. All environment minions become villain minions as soon as they are created. They will use all of their actions to Attack and Hinder the heroes, and gain +1 to attempts to do so for the rest of the scene.

Heroes can attempt to counteract this influence by solving the following challenge:
Counteract the Fomorian Influence
If they succeed, reduce the “Aura of Discontent” die to a d6.

RED
Minor Twists

• Surge of Anger: Formorian hatred settles into someone’s bones. Roll the environment dice and Boost one target with the Max+Min dice. If they use this Boost, the next hostile action against them gains the same bonus.
• Caught in the Brawl: People are fighting everywhere, and others are catching strays. Roll the environment, and Attack one target with the Max die and another target with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Rage-Fueled Vitality: The riot can’t be stopped! Roll the Environment dice. Create a number of d6 “Rowdy Rioters” equal to the Min die, then step up the status die of all environment and villain minions and lieutenants once (to a maximum of d10). All Villains Recover equal to the Mid die.

As the United States entered World War II, businesses scrambled to show their support for the cause, putting out comics loudly declaring their patriotism and support. Venture Comics had been actively supporting the Allied Powers for over a year already, first through their Covert Tactics stories and then with the development of Madame Liberty, but there was always room for more, and in 1942 Skybreaker began to face off against Nazi plots and Fomorian tricks designed to weaken the morale of the brave American soldier and the populace that supported him. These storylines were neither particularly nuanced nor, in many cases, particularly well-written. They were mostly chances for Skybreaker to investigate a mysterious situation, discover a dark creature at the heart of it, and then throw his spear at it.

Occasionally, however, Skybreaker was given a chance to use his charisma and drive instead of just fighting, and one of the most famous of these stories occurred in “The Rationing Riots”, the main story for Cryptic Trails #42. In this story, Lewis Lamont returned home to discover simmering discontent over recently-applied rationing for the war effort, with even longtime friends that he believed would support the cause of fighting fascism talking about how annoyed they were not to have enough sugar for their tea, or rubber for their tires. Immediately suspecting Fomorian activity, Lamont set to work investigating.

It wasn’t long before Skybreaker’s efforts uncovered a two-pronged assault on American morale. Nazi spies were stealing rations, artificially limiting supply even further than expected and leading to people being unable to turn in their ration coupons, while Sluagh lurked at the rationing centres and subtly pushed the minds of the citizens to focus only on what they were missing, and not on what it represented. As the discontent began to explode into violent altercations, Skybreaker was forced to confront a riot on the waterfront, fighting to keep innocent people touched by Fomorian power from hurting each other and themselves while he rounded up the Nazi perpetrators.

Ultimately, Skybreaker threw his spear into the clouds, creating a thunderstorm that washed away Sluagh’s hold over the people, and then he faced off against the Nazi spy that Sluagh had empowered and killed him with a single blow of his spear. Sluagh managed to escape, mocking her Nazi master for falling so easily and swearing that she would have another chance to show Skybreaker that he was no better than any other human.

The story wasn’t particularly groundbreaking, but the underlying message would help to set the tone for Skybreaker through the war era – that people who were scared or angry were likely to be manipulated by a few dangerous individuals, rather than being cruel as a group. It helped to cement Sluagh’s relationship to Skybreaker and established the disdain for her would-be masters that kept her from becoming a Nazi villain and fading away, and it provided a classic example of Skybreaker simply creating storms, something that he rarely remembered he was able to do even in much more dangerous situations. And, of course, it expressed public support for rationing and sacrifice on behalf of a greater purpose, without delving into pure hatred of the enemy.

Behind The Scenes:

Thinking about what the superheroes were up to during the war, and of course a lot of it was ‘fighting Nazis’, but I wanted something a little bit unusual for Skybreaker. This served the purpose. Rationing was really kicking off in the US in late 1942, so it would seem like a topical thing that readers would look at and say, “Oh, yeah, I’m also annoyed about this but I’m not going to let myself be tricked into complaining!”

Pure propaganda, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Electric Bay

Electric Bay600×400 47.3 KB

Type: Standard Location
Key Appearance: Flatfoot Adventures #7, January 1943

Traits:

• Whirring Machinery d10
• Eager Fair-goers d8
• Flashing Lights d6

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Midway Gift: Seeing the trouble, one of the carnies grabs a midway prize and tosses it to a hero to use. Roll the environment dice and Boost a hero with the Mid die.
• Trapped On a Ride: One of the rides breaks down, leaving fair-goers trapped and terrified! Create the following challenge: Save the fair-goers

Until it is resolved, each time you roll the environment dice, also Hinder one hero with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Criminal Carnie: One of the carnies decides that the heroes and villains have to go before something bad happens, and he grabs his hammer and gets involved. Create a d8 “Carnival Strongman” lieutenant.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Panicked Crowd: A line waiting for an event realizes there’s a fight on and stampedes! Roll the environment dice and attack all nearby targets with the Mid die.
• Crooked Carnies: Skilled bruisers hiding among the staff come out swinging. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d10 “Fairground Security” minions equal to the total on the Min die.

Major Twist

• Runaway Ferris Wheel: The Ferris Wheel breaks off and begins rolling across the fairgrounds! Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Mid die, then create the following challenge: Safely stop the Ferris Wheel.

Until it is stopped, each time you roll the environment dice also Attack one target with the Mid die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Furious Carnies: The carnies deploy in force to shut everything down. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d6 “Fairground Staff” minions equal to the Max die.
• Electrical Overcharge: The advanced electrical systems running the fairground begin to short out and overload. Create the following challenge: Shut down the power.

Roll the environment dice and create a “Strobing Lights and Blaring Sound” penalty equal to the Min die. It is persistent and exclusive and affects everyone present until the challenge is resolved.

Major Twist

• Full-On Stampede: No one is sticking around, but there’s no safe way out. The crowds are stampeding everywhere. Roll the environment dice, and attack all targets on the ground with the Mid+Min dice.

The launch of Flatfoot Adventures in 1942 led to a growth of more brightly lit, technologically-fancy Ferristown locations, many of which were later retconned into being part of Ferrisville. One of the more enduring was Electric Bay, a glittering amusement park on the edge of the lake fueled by the latest in electrical technologies.

Electric Bay first appeared in a storyline featuring the Company. In Flatfoot Adventures #7, the amusement park opened its doors for the first time, showcasing the latest in Ferris Industries technology with a collection of brand new rollercoasters and rides. Ferris hired the best technicians and carnival staff from around the country, but the true purpose of Electric Bay was to cover large-scale smuggling operations from the lake. The crowds and constant trucks of supplies for the midway served as a distraction that would allow Ferris to smuggle in weapons, alcohol, and machinery for his operations.

Flatfoot, on the trail of guns being brought into the city, soon found his way to Electric Bay, but when he discovered a shipment in progress the smugglers immediately opened fire, causing the park’s advanced technology to go a bit haywire and turning the situation into a near-disaster. Fortunately for Flatfoot and unfortunately for the Company, Ferris had failed to understand the carnie mindset. The workers that Ferris had assumed would rally to his troops cared more about the park than they did about their paycheques, and after a brief tussle with the robot lawman (who they instinctively distrusted) the staff of Electric Bay ended up rounding up the smugglers who had damaged their equipment and helped Flatfoot turn them in.

This became a trend for Electric Bay over the next several decades. Re-introduced in the 1960s under new management, the amusement park was a frequent setting for dates, covert meetings with informants, and running battles with supervillains.

Led by new manager Carmine Galbadi, a low-grade crook with aspirations of going straight, the park started to take in other crooks and hoodlums who were tired of the life but didn’t have a way to reintegrate into society easily. The staff of the park carved out a neutral space, fending off attempts by the Company to take over while also holding off the law from inspecting their rides and shipments. Sometimes they would take money to let the Company move goods through their turf, as long as it wasn’t anything too dangerous or liable to bring superheroic eyes on them, and sometimes they would acquire a bit of dangerously advanced technology and immediately integrate it into a new ride to draw in the crowds, but most of the time Electric Bay was more of a backdrop than a faction. Carmine himself was constantly frustrated by Flatfoot, alternating between reluctantly lending the robot a hand and actively getting in the way of his work.

In the Iron Age, Electric Bay would become an ally across the lake for the Rogue Agents, helping them to keep the Company and the Table from spreading back into Ferrisville. While the inhabitants weren’t particularly interested in heroics, they were very interested in maintaining the sanctuary that they’d built for outcasts and the marginalized, and Wildstyle ended up spending quite a bit of time there sprucing up their artwork and helping out with the rides.

Behind The Scenes:

This is one where I controlled one roll! One thing that I knew I wanted the moment I started working on locations for Venture Comics was an amusement park with a Ferris Wheel in Ferrisville, and I also knew I wanted it early. I rolled up all of the twists randomly, but the environment type and trait dice were pre-determined this time.

I went back and forth between “the staff are Company agents” and “the staff are their own thing”, and landed on “their own thing” because I think it’s a more interesting story and makes for better comics. This amusement park turns into a nice neutral meeting place for people under the watchful eye of a lot of heavily-armed carnies. Useful for a hardboiled superhero setting!

Inclined to agree. I like carnies as their own faction rather than being clearly on the hero or villain side of things, with their main interest being to make sure the show as a whole survives. For most of them it’s not just their paycheck, it’s their home, and their coworkers are found family for many, especially in travelling shows. You get exceptions where the whole show is a front for some nefarious enterprise but those don’t tend to last too long before some hero busts them up. Weirdly, there never seem to be whole carnivals of heroes, despite being potentially useful as “cover” for significantly inhuman-looking supers and a mobile base to boot. More common to see a lone hero (or sidekick) with a carnival/circus background, especially in Golden Age books.

My own closest attempt at this was more complicated and narrowly focused on a single attraction, notably a big “permanent” Ferris Wheel - which, as I recall, was inspired by discussion of the Ferristown/Ferrisville thing as well.

Hidden Uranian Lab

Hidden Uranian Lab600×400 412 KB

Type: Dangerous Location
Key Appearance: Champions of Truth #16, August 1944

Traits:

• Deadly Alien Technology d12
• Unshielded Nuclear Reactors d8
• Robot Workforce d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Robot Support: Sensing danger, the lab diverts robots to support the Uranian forces. Roll the environment dice and boost all villain targets with the Min die.
• Sound the Alarm: An alarm sensor is tripped, threatening to call back Uranian scouts! Create a new challenge: Shut down the alarms

If the scene enters the Yellow Zone before this challenge is resolved, create (H) d8 “Uranian Scout” minions and remove this challenge.
Major Twist

• Restructuring: A series of walls suddenly springs up, dividing the heroes. Create (H)-1 new zones, and move one hero character to each of them.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Radiation Ray: Automated defenses blast a hero with radiation. Roll the environment die and Hinder one hero target with the Mid die. This penalty is persistent and exclusive.
• Alien Assault Suit: The Uranians pull out their specialized equipment. Roll the environment die and Boost one villain target with the Mid die. This bonus is persistent and exclusive.

Major Twist

• Nuclear Cannons: The lab’s automated nuclear-powered weapons get a shot in. Roll the environment dice and Attack one hero with the Mid+Min dice.

RED
Minor Twists

• Collapsing Equipment: A section of the lab collapses on someone! Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Max+Min dice.
• Robot Retribution: The lab’s robot workforce turns violent as the situation worsens. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Robot Worker” minions equal to the Mid die. They have +2 to their damage saves.

Major Twist

• Escape Pods: The lab’s staff begins to flee at high speed, detonating sections of the lab in the process. Roll the environment dice and Attack all targets in a single zone, then create the following challenge in each other zone: Countdown to launch

When the scene tracker advances, Attack all targets in any zone that still has a challenge and then remove all challenges. Each escaped pod contains Uranian soldiers and technology that have escaped.

In its early years, Champions of Truth mostly avoided stories that were directly about World War II. Vincent Chambers felt that those stories were well-represented in Covert Tactics, Madame Liberty, and occasional issues of Flatfoot Adventure and Cryptic Trails, and largely left Greenheart and the Steward to face more fantastical foes. For Greenheart, this meant battles against flamboyant supervillains and dark magic, and for the Steward it meant an array of aliens with designs on taking advantage of planet Earth.

Released in August 1944, Champions of Truth #16 was unusual in that it lacked a backup story; the entire issue focused on a single storyline that would help to canonize two of the Steward’s persistent opponents, “Nest of the Night Bird”. The villainous Night Bird had appeared twice in 1943, first in her introduction and then in the story in which the Steward stopped her from kidnapping humans for an alien scientist. This time, she appeared at the start of the issue raiding an experimental lab working on uranium power, grabbing a prototype uranium engine and flying away with it. Believing that Night Bird was part of something bigger, the Steward chased her, only to discover that she was roosting on top of a hidden alien laboratory, using radioactive materials to hide herself from detection by blending into the surrounding radiation levels the lab was putting out.

As the Steward approached the area, the alien scientists panicked and opened fire, revealing themselves as Uranian invaders! They had settled on top of an old uranium mine and were digging out its radioactive materials for their research, and mistakenly believed that the Steward was after them. The Steward quickly responded, but the radiation in the building made it hard for him to fight against the secretive intruders, as did Night Bird’s attacks as she tried to stop the superhero from wrecking her nest. Joining forces with the Uranians, she fought him to a standstill while waves of robots smashed themselves against him.

Ultimately, the Steward was able to reach the power core of the base and destroy it, collapsing the facility and sending the Uranians fleeing. Night Bird vanished in the confusion, and the Steward believed that she had been crushed by falling rubble, but she would return soon enough. The fleeing Uranians would next be seen in November, when the scientists were picked up by Overlord Trake during his first invasion of the Earth.

“Nest of the Night Bird” would help to establish personalities for both Night Bird herself and for the Uranian fleet. In her case, it established an uncanny ability to track down alien technology and situate herself alongside it, making it easier for writers to explain why she was present without needing to have aliens out looking for her. For the Uranians, the existence of secret outposts and hidden bases would quickly become a core aspect of the radioactive aliens, giving them a reputation for trickery and surprise rather than the merely rampaging invaders they had been in their first appearance. This would become a signature trait of Overlord Trake, a sneering superiority coupled with a reluctance to fight fair that would make him such a popular Silver Age character. Other hidden Uranian labs would become a common battleground throughout the history of Venture Comics, blossoming like mushrooms whenever the Uranians could get a foothold on Earth.

Behind The Scenes:

I had originally said that the second appearance of the Uranians was when Overlord Trake appeared in November 1944, but this was too perfect a place to use them, so they get two smaller appearances before becoming a big deal.

Evil alien labs are a big thing in the Golden and Silver ages, and this one is no different! Lots of nasty tech, painful penalties, and dangerous enemies to go around, plus a fun major twist that seeds future plot threads if you don’t deal with it!

Side note - I’m grabbing public domain comics art for some of my Golden Age stuff; this will stop working pretty fast once I’m through the fifties but it’s fun for now!

March Of The Panzergeist

panzergeist600×400 148 KB

Type: Dangerous Event
Key Appearance: Covert Tactics #62, March 1945

Traits:

• Nazi War Machines d10
• Stormy Weather d8
• Broken Rubble d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Shelling: Outlying panzers shell the area. Roll the environment dice and Attack all heroes with the Min die.
• Relay Station: A Panzergeist relay is discovered! Create a new challenge: Override the relay station. When the challenge is resolved, step down the status die of all villain minions in play.

Major Twist

• Mind Ray: A hero is struck by the Panzergeist’s Mental Ray Gun! Roll the environment dice and Attack and Hinder one hero with the Mid die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Mind-Controlled Civilians: The Mental Ray Guns strike civilians in hiding!. Roll the environment die and create a number of d8 “Brainwashed Citizens” villain minions equal to the Mid die.
• Mental Bombardment: The Panzergeists radiate their power across the field! Roll the environment die and Hinder all hero targets with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• The Battle Lines Collapse: The Panzergeists rumble forwards towards the city! Advance the scene tracker one space.

RED
Minor Twists

• Will Power: The passive power of the Panzergeists emboldens the Nazi menace. Roll the environment dice and Boost all villain targets with the Max die.
• Surrounded! The Panzergeists surround and assault the heroes. Every hero must make an Overcome as a free action to avoid danger. A hero who fails takes a Major Twist.

Major Twist

• Overwhelming Mental Energy: A weakened hero is targeted by Iron Will for conversion. Roll the environment dice and Attack one hero with the Min die. Also Hinder that hero with the Mid die. The penalty is persistent and exclusive, and if the hero is taken Out while the penalty persists create a villain lieutenant with a status die equal to their highest power die to represent their compelled state.

By early 1945, it was clear to the writers of Venture Comics that the end of World War II was on the horizon. After the liberation of Paris the previous year, Madame Liberty and Covert Tactics had both begun focusing on pressing the advantage, taking down Nazis and fighting against Japanese soldiers across the Pacific. Writers rushed to get a handful of big events in to sell comics before the war ended, with a series of major stories taking up full issues of the comics instead of the more common multiple stories per issue up to that point.

In March of 1945, Covert Tactics #62 saw the last of these major events during the “March of the Panzergeist” story. As the German lines crumbled, Iron Will unleashed the last of the great Nazi war machines. His Panzergeists, amphibious tanks able to project hypnotic rays alongside their powerful artillery, evaded the Allied lines and began to cross the English Channel, with the goal of landing on the shores of Britain and collapsing Allied morale as the population was driven into a frenzy of Nazi patriotism through the hypnotic power of Iron Will!

Madame Liberty discovered the threat and stowed away on the Panzergeist fleet with her sidekick, but as they began to sabotage the enemy from within it became clear to them that they would never be able to stop the fleet before it reached Dover, and the Allied forces were too locked in to fall back in time. Madame Liberty sent a desperate radio message to her sometimes ally Jonah Drake, a supersonic underwater hero known as the Living Torpedo. The Living Torpedo was in America at the time, but he was able to receive Madame Liberty’s message, rendezvous with another Madame Liberty ally, the Italian freedom fighter known as the Partisan; the two heroes arrived on the shores of England just as the first Panzergeists breached the waves.

Together, the four heroes battled across the shores of Dover, fighting tanks and pulling mind-controlled civilians out of the line of fire. The Human Torpedo crushed the panzers before they could land on the beaches, while the Partisan led the charge against the Nazi tanks. Madame Liberty and Kid Liberty sabotaged the relays the Nazis were using to amplify their powers, confronting Iron Will as he threatened to turn the entire population of Dover into Nazi spies!

The story ended in an Allied victory, of course. Iron Will’s plans were shattered, his forces were killed or rounded up, and the villain himself was shot dead by the Human Torpedo, falling off the cliffs of Dover into the sea. With the surrender of Germany two months later, it would also prove to be the final storyline in Covert Tactics about the Nazi threat; while Madame Liberty would continue to hunt down leftover Nazi super-science for the next few years, most of them hastily-rewritten stories that had originally been about the Reich, Covert Tactics shifted its attention to the Pacific, with the Human Torpedo sinking Japanese ships until the sudden surrender of the latter later that year.

“The March of the Panzergeist” marked one of the largest superhero crossovers in the Golden Age, and there was some discussion about forming a team out of the four heroes permanently. But the slow decline of superheroes would lead to Madame Liberty increasingly being relegated to their own comics, and the gradual disappearance of the the other three heroes; by the time the true Champions of Truth were formed in the 1960s Jonah Drake was in a very different role, the Partisan was replaced by his Jotari legacy, and Kid Liberty had moved on. Iron Will would return as a Soviet agent a few years later, with no real explanation for how he survived his fall off the Cliffs; later stories suggested that he was saved by one of his mind-controlled minions, without really bothering to interrogate the situation.

Behind The Scenes:

I wanted to fit one good “fighting Nazis” environment into this book, and this was pretty much the last chance to get it there. When I saw that March 1945 was already listed as the final appearance of Iron Will, it seemed like the perfect chance to write up a mind-control tank Nazi invasion of Britain just as the Allies are winning the war.

This environment also marks the first appearance of two more Golden Age superheroes, both of whom will get writeups in the future. I’m not actually sure what Partisan’s powers are; he’s sort of the Venture version of the Human Torch or Manhunter, a hero whose name gets grabbed for a totally different person in the Silver Age and thus never really appears again.

But the Human Torpedo will be showing up again later. Much later. So much later, sorry. I thought about taking time to explain his whole deal, but I was at the edge of pagecount already, so “he’s sometimes Madame Liberty’s ally, he swims at supersonic speeds, he’s a bit of an asshole and he does not get his own comic again post-Golden Age” pretty much covers it for now.

But if you’re curious: Imagine if Namor was also Doc Savage.

when you get there, partisan is also a type of medieval polearm in addition to factional politics

I wonder if Sentinels Comics tried to sue and claimed that the Panzergeists were infringing their trademark on the name of a certain iconic General.

Probably not. General Geist was a one-off in the Golden Age; he didn’t become a recurring villain until he came back as a ghost. The Panzergeists were also a one-off, and they’re not super-similar thematically.

Not worth the time.

Bastille Day Parade

Bastille Day600×400 202 KB

Type: Quirky Event
Key Appearance: Madame Liberty #67, July 1947

Traits:

• Military Displays d8
• Summer Heat d8
• Cheering Crowds d6

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Parade Marshals: The parade’s marshals move in to separate any violence they see. Roll the environment’s dice, and Defend all targets with the Min die until the next environment turn.
• Blocked Route: The Bold Bandit drops obstacles in the parade’s path! Create the following challenge: Clear the route.

If the challenge is not resolved by the time the environment changes zones, advance the scene tracker and remove the challenge.
Major Twist

• It’s Madame Liberty!!: A hero is recognized and swarmed by grateful civilians! Roll the environment dice and Hinder one hero with the Max die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Seeking the Limelight: A local politician starts trying to make the parade all about them, getting in the way of proper patriotism. Create a d8 “Local Politician” environment lieutenant.
• Pull Them Onto The Float: Someone gets mistaken for part of the parade and pulled into it! Roll the environment dice. Hinder a Hero with the Mid die and Defend them with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Twenty-One Gun Salute: The Bold Bandit replaced a squad’s blanks with bullets! Roll the environment dice. Hinder one target with the Max die and Attack another target with the Mid die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Run Over By A Tank: The parade route isn’t supposed to go through here! Pick a group of targets that are close to each other. Roll the environment dice and Attack all targets with the Max die.
• La Marseillaise : The crowd begins to sing the national anthem, and everyone is swept with patriotic fervor. Roll the environment dice, and Boost all patriotic targets with the Max die.

Major Twist

• Overzealous Military Action: A group of French soldiers decide to intervene to save the parade, but they’re liable to cause as much harm as good! Roll the environment dice. Create a number of d10 “Squad of Soldiers” minions equal to the Max die. Half of them will Attack villains, while the other half accidentally Hinder heroes.

In the post-war period, Madame Liberty struggled to find its feet. The character had been designed and defined by her work as an undercover rebel fighting against the Nazi threat, and with the end of the war there was discussion of simply letting the character wrap up and moving on to other things. People were tired of war stories, writers said. They wanted something new and exciting, not to be reminded of the horrors of the past several years.

Vincent Chambers agreed, but Madame Liberty was still one of the three top heroes for Venture Comics, and he refused to toss her aside the way that smaller wartime heroes like the Partisan were being removed. Instead, he created a series of stories about rebuilding in France and western Europe, in which criminals, ex-Nazis, and corrupt businessmen sought to interfere in the country’s reconstruction. With the help of Kid Liberty and Rick Wilson, she did battle with a mostly-forgettable collection of minor supervillains, including a few remnants from the war years. Her stories got increasingly silly, leaning into the new feel of the post-war years, but they were able to generally stay popular.

“The Battle of the Bastille”, published in Madame Liberty #67, was a perfect example of these sorts of tales. As Paris prepared for its annual Bastille Day parade, a villain calling himself the Bold Bandit threatened to destroy the patriotic spirit of France by cancelling the parade! He sent a radio broadcast over the city warning the people not to attend, because France had ‘fallen once, and would fall again’.

Madame Liberty refused to allow this to happen. She and Kid Liberty offered their services to the French government, shadowing the parade and stopping a string of increasingly silly attempts by the Bold Bandit to disrupt the parade, confuse the crowds of people there to watch it, or just run Madame Liberty over with a tank. The Bandit had no powers to speak of; he made use of a string of well-designed traps and gimmicks in his efforts, along with gangs of paid toughs to work his schemes for him.

Ultimately, Madame Liberty tracked down the Bold Bandit, learning that he was a French soldier furious that his nation was claiming to be patriotic after having surrendered to the Nazis during the war. Madame Liberty reminded him of all the French people who had continued to fight under Nazi occupation, and convinced him to turn himself in. The issue ended in a patriotic rendition of La Marseillaise.

If issues like this had continued for much more than two years, Madame Liberty might have ended up as one of the casualties of the end of the Golden Age. Fortunately, the title’s next writer hit on moving the heroine to Berlin as part of her reconstruction efforts, where she came into conflict with Soviet agents led by Iron Will. The Cold War gave Madame Liberty a new place to work her superheroic spycraft, keeping her comic popular through the 1950s and allowing her to secure her place as one of the pinnacle heroes of Venture Comics.

Behind The Scenes:

Back to back Madame Liberty stories, but they definitely show how dramatically her adventures shifted with the end of the war! Two years ago she was battling Nazi mind-control tanks, and now she’s having parade hijinks.

I do love the parade hijinks, though. It’s totally silly for a parade to just keep rolling along during a supervillain action scene, but it’s the right kind of silly. None of the twists actually stop the parade, they just make the situation more chaotic and goofy.

Big sack full of loose marbles, right?

Inexplicably, Rick’s Cafe Americain in Casablanca is also shuttered at once despite it being on a different continent and him not having owned it in several years. No one is shocked, shocked I say, by the discovery of illegal gambling on the premises.

It’s a minor Green twist, it can happen more than once! Big bag of marbles, saw through a tree and crash it across the road, drive a car directly into the middle and smash the engine, just place a lost child there for the whole parade to pause and try to help, all sorts of options.

I’m quite proud of both of this week’s environments, and I hope you’ll like them! We’re kicking off the end of our Golden Age tales with…

The Mattson Mire

Mattson Mire600×400 160 KB

Type: Dangerous Location
Key Appearance: Twilight Carnival #60, April 1950
Traits:

• Strangling Vines d12
• Life-Draining Mud d10
• Poisonous Insects d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Mud Men: The mud comes to life! Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 Mud Men equal to the Min die. If they fail a damage save while at d8 or above, reduce them to d4 instead of destroying them.
• Poisonous Sting: A cloud of insects descends on a hero. That hero’s player must step down their highest Power or Quality die for the scene. They may restore it with a successful Overcome action.

Major Twist

• Writhing Roots: The roots of the swamp reach up to devour its victims. Roll the environment dice and Attack all targets not affiliated with the Mire using the Mid die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Life Unending: The swamp’s power flows into those who seek it. Roll the environment dice and Boost one target affiliated with the Mire using the Max die.
• Cage of Branches: The swamp reaches out to drag a hero into the muck. Create the following two-step challenge: Break Them Free

Until the challenge is resolved, the hero may not move from their current spot.

Major Twist

• Drink Deep: The swamp drains the essence from its invaders and gives it to its friends. Roll the environment dice and Attack all targets not affiliated with the Mire using the Mid die. For each target Attacked, Boost one target affiliated with the Mire using the Min die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Quicksand: The swamp tries to swallow its victims. Roll the environment dice and Hinder all targets not affiliated with the Mire with the Max die.
• Unearth The Dead: The swamp disgorges its victims. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Vine-Filled Skeleton” minions equal to the Max die.

Major Twist

• The Trees Walk: The Mire’s trees wrap around an ally and lash out at their foes. Roll the environment dice and Defend one target with the Max die. Attack all targets not affiliated with the Mire using the Max die.

Note: All environment minions and lieutenants are considered to be affiliated with the Mire. Villains may or may not be depending on the story, and Heroes are never affiliated with the Mire.

While the other superheroes of Venture Comics were struggling, Twilight Carnival thrived by leaning increasingly into horror elements and downplaying the superheroic nature of its protagonist. Under the stewardship of new editor-in-chief Joe Manzetta, the Midnight Rider faced off against the sort of creepy monsters that other comics showed devouring innocents and spreading fear through the world, using her carnival wits and magical tricks to win the day. She often came close to defeat, but never so close as when she investigated the Mattson Mire.

The story began when the Carnival set up in a small New England town. The police came to investigate the disappearance of a young couple, suspecting the carnies of foul play, and in order to clear her friends’ names the Midnight Rider began to investigate. She soon learned that people had been going missing in the region for decades, dating back to a series of mysterious witch trials held in the 1700s. The supposed witchfinder, Mathias Mattson, had in fact been seeking out young women with magical talent, killing them to steal their power for his own; when one of the women cursed him, he was swallowed by the local bog, sinking into the mud. But the stories said that Mattson’s ghost still stalked the swamp, looking for magical women to kill.

The Midnight Rider ventured into the swamp, hoping to free the lost souls contained within. She was shocked to discovered that Mattson was not her foe – it was the Mire itself. The gathered power Mattson had stolen brought the swamp itself to life. It was hungry for magic, infecting the plants, insects, and mud itself with its desire and reaching out to ensnare the unwary. Over time, the Mattson Mire began to send out tendrils of itself, ambushing those with faint magical talent and luring them into the swamp to die.

Armed for a ghost and facing an entire environment, the Midnight Rider fought against the mud men, cursed insects, and grasping vines trying to steal her power. She wasn’t able to save the couple; they were long dead. But she did succeed in sealing the swamp and preventing it from continuing to prey on victims – for now.

The Mire wasn’t intended to be an ongoing threat; the writer of the issue had simply whipped it up for the purposes of the issue. But in 1953, another writer grabbed it for a Cryptic Trails story in which Coven lured Greenheart into the depths of the swamp, planning to use its fell magic to steal her power. Greenheart was able to turn the swamp and the witch against each other, leaving Coven trapped and drained of her magic. When Coven returned, she made an oblique references to having ‘come to terms’ with the Mire.

In the Silver Age, as Coven was reshaped to be a less frightening and more colourful foe to Greenheart, writers wanted her to have a secretive lair that the heroine couldn’t track. A particularly cheeky author gave her Mattson Mire, papering over its more horrific elements to leave it as a creepy living swamp, able to slip through the wilderness and manifest wherever Coven pleased. The Mire served as the first base for the Congress of Deceit, and as Coven grew darker and more frightening the Mire returned to its darker past as well.
As a result, Mattson Mire became a recurring element in several Venture Comics titles over the years. Sometimes a villain would make a deal with the swamp and share power with it, aligning themselves with its dark hunger. Sometimes they would try to steal its might for themselves – both Doctor Freak and Elysium Inc. had major storylines attempting to siphon off the Mire’s power, with heroes caught in the middle as the swamp lashed out at all concerned.

Behind The Scenes:

Evil swamp!

Everyone loves an evil swamp, you know? And it’s a great spot for something that can become part of a lot of different magical forces. It’s an environment, but it’s also potentially the primary enemy, and since it has nebulous relocation powers it can be where you want it to be.

This is a nasty environment, but how nasty mostly depends on whether you’re fighting a villain who’s working alongside it, or a villain who’s trying to steal its power for themselves.

Swamps are magic, everybody knows that

Not quite everyone. One of my old players ran a sort-of mud-person hero (think a mashup of a soggy Ben Grimm and an unusually articulate Swamp Thing) for well over a year, and “Pete Marsh” would have been very disappointed in Mattson Mire and endlessly preachy about it (appropriate for fighting a hypocritical witch hunter’s ghost, one supposes).

“It’s this kind of thing that makes it so hard to convince people to practice ecological conservation, you know. One swamp zombie outbreak and a dozen perfectly innocent mundane wetlands wind up drained and paved over as parking lots, did you ever think of that? And look at the state of these poor alligators! You can’t just feed them on human beings 24/7, they need some of their natural prey animals and that means maintaining a proper ecosystem whether you like it or not. Next thing you know you’ll start getting invasive species and…is that an undead Burmese python?!? That’s the last straw, I’m calling in Florida Man and we’re wrecking this place.”

not everyone. In the Nightmist episode “SOMEONE” asked why there was so much wetlands terrain in her deck

Time to wrap up the Golden Age, and we are…

On The Trail Of A Poisoner

Poisoner600×400 272 KB

Type: Unique
Key Appearance: Company Town #183, June 1953

Traits:

• The City At Night d10
• Secrets and Lies d10
• Violence and Misery d8

Green Zone
Minor Twists

• A False Lead: Someone was sure they saw a man slip into that alley. Roll the environment dice and Hinder an investigator with the Mid die.
• Flip An Asset: Someone who helped the poisoner might be convinced to change sides. Create the following challenge: Get Them On Your Side

If the challenge is resolved, create a +2 “Allied Action” bonus that can be used in the next scene.

Major Twist

• Scuffle In the Streets: A group of would-be muggers try to get the drop on you. They don’t last long, but they get some hits in. Roll the environment dice and Attack all investigators with the Mid die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Too Late: The poisoner is taking out loose ends, and you’re too late to save them. It’s a grisly sight. Roll the environment dice and Attack an investigator with the Max die, dealing psychic damage.
• Not Too Late: The poisoner is taking out loose ends, but you’re just in time. Create the following challenge: Save The Poisoning Victim

If the scene tracker advances to the next zone before the challenge is resolved, the victim dies. If the challenge is resolved, create a a +2 “Antidote” bonus that can be used in the next scene.

Major Twist

• Pursuing Detective: The cops have figured out what’s up, but they’re on the wrong trail – yours! Create a d8 “Dogged Detective” lieutenant. He immediately rolls his status die and Hinders one investigator with the result.

RED
Minor Twists

• Poison Trap: A gas trap goes off, fouling up the clues and the investigators! Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Max die; Hinder all targets in the same zone with the Mid zone.
• Back Off, Or Else: Digging into the poisonings is drawing all the wrong sorts of attention, and they don’t care if the poisoner is caught or goes free as long as everyone stops making a mess. Create a d10 “Massive Bruiser” lieutenant.

Major Twist

• Mass Poisoning: The poisoner commits a desperate act of mass poisoning to buy time to escape. Trigger any combination of “Too Late” and “Not Too Late” a total of (H) times. Each hero may only be targeted once by “Too Late”.

By the early 1950s, there were very few superhero comics left at Venture Comics, and most of those were blending themselves with other genres in order to stay popular. Company Town was at the forefront of this shift, blending a growing tendency to draw on noir detective tropes and storylines as the Revenant and a few minor leftover characters struggled against the dominance of Mr. Ferris and his iron-fisted rule.

Company Town #183 was a typical example of the storylines of the title’s last few years, blending mystery action with pulpy superhuman capabilities. The story opened with the mysterious death of a Ferristown reporter, Davis Jamieson in his office. Jamieson had been invented for this issue, but was retroactively revealed to be one of the many sources the Revenant used in his ongoing war against the criminal elements of Ferristown, and the Revenant immediately suspected the involvement of the Company. The police were inclined to view the death as a simple heart attack, but the Revenant knew that the reporter had been working on a big case, investigating corruption, racketeering, and smuggling taking place using the local Grevenworks automobile factory. He investigated the reporter’s home, and discovered that Jamieson had a bottle of brandy that had been laced with a unique poison, one that would leave no trace in the victim’s system aside from a suspicious heart attack.

What followed was a brutal cat and mouse trail as the Revenant and his allies tracked down the poisoner, using the ingredients used to concoct this impossible poison as their lead. As they did so, however, their target was also hard at work taking out anyone with information about the factory and its corruption. Workers who had seen mysterious things, criminals who had taken part in the smuggling, and officials who had accepted anonymous bribes were all targets, and the Revenant raced through town to identify the next victims and save them. Some of them he was able to reach just in time; others were already dead when he arrived, poisoned through air vents, darts, and drinks. Each poison was different, created using new formulas and deployment methods, but every one led to a signature heart attack.

Despite the poisoner’s best efforts, the Revenant was able to determine who was gathering the ingredients – the secretary to Thomas Manford, one of the night shift foremen at the factory. Racing against time, the Revenant saved the secretary from being Manford’s next victim, and learned from her that Manford was actually a brilliant chemist whose inventions had gone unnoticed by his peers, forcing him to take a factory job to make ends meet. Filled with bitterness at the world, Manford became determined to take Grevenworks down, and to make the living that he felt that he was owed.

With his chemical genius, Manford had begun faking damage to factory goods, inflicting seeming structural damage that could be easily wiped away with the right solvent. Using a few of his workers as accomplices, he had been hiring cheap workers as scapegoats, blaming them for his floor’s above-average damage levels, and then selling the pieces on the black market. Grevenworks was being hit coming and going, with their costs rising rapidly and their sales dropping as the market was flooded with equally-effective but much less expensive goods, and Manford was making the cash he needed to retire to France.

Of course, the scheme couldn’t last. The one hole in the plan was that all of the workers had to run through Manford’s section, and when Jamieson began sniffing around to find the source of the black market goods and the reason for the rapidly-dropping share price of Grevenworks, Manford realized that there were loose ends everywhere connecting him back to the scheme. Jamieson had suspected that the plot was one of Ferris’s attempts to snuff out a competitor; because of that, he hadn’t realized that Manford was his target, and had allowed the poisoner into his home for an interview. But Manford knew that what Jamieson could uncover, others could as well. He’d started covering his tracks, but he was too late.

The Revenant confronted Manford in his office, laying out the plot and demanding that the criminal turn himself in. Instead, Manford pricked the Revenant with a poisoned pin, then dragged his corpse to the rooftop with the goal of framing him as the killer. The Revenant revived, of course, standing from behind Manford and hissing his name, and the terrified criminal leaped from the roof to his death. It was a grim conclusion to a grim story – perfectly in theme for the Revenant’s final outings, but also a key part of the reason that he wasn’t retooled following the implementation of the Comics Code.

Behind The Scenes:

I wanted to slip something challenging into the mix for the Golden Age, and this seemed like the right time for it; not a lot of things with long-term effect were happening in the early 50s. Instead, we get an investigation playing out as an action scene.

There are a lot of different ways to handle investigations in Sentinel Comics, none of them particularly canonical. This felt like a good chance to try something very different.

It’s also a bit longer than usual! Because of the layout issues, I need to have an extra page at the end of each age. In the past, I used a dangling lieutenant to solve that layout problem, but I don’t have anything like that for environments, so the last environment of each age needs to have a two-page writeup. Gave us some time to delve into the Mysterious Manford, who is not ever going to appear again.

Feels like a plot out of the old Sandman Mystery Theater book from Vertigo - which is right on target, because that book was trying hard to be an updated detective noir comic and mostly succeeded.

That’s the Wesley Dodds Sandman, aka the one with the gas mask and sleep gas gun, not the occasionally insufferably angsty prat from the Endless. Having both of them in Vertigo makes for easy confusion. Wesley’s the one who doesn’t have a hot goth sister that Thanatos would get all sweaty about if he existed in DC.

Reminds me of the example in the D&D 4E DMG of using a complex skill challenge formatted as a “choose your own adventure” flow chart to represent exploring a city

Wesley also wore yellow spandex and why he changed is a deep secret lore thing.

I assume you mean Thanos, although I am currently amusing myself imagining Thanatos from Hades and Death of the Endless hanging out.

Now I’m imaging Thanos somehow being in the DCU and going on a date with Death, expecting D. of the Endless, and instead the Black Racer shows up.

“Choose your own adventure”? In MY D&D? Say it ain’t so!

D’oh, yes, of course the “Mad Titan” in all his wrinkly-chinned glory. In my defense, I was listening to a Gargoyles episode while typing and Xanatos invaded my brain. I have a hard time telling all the Darkseid knock-offs apart even when I’m focused.

To be honest, I suspect all the DC Thanatoses (Thanoti? Thanatoose?) probably get all hot and sweaty over Death of the Endless too. Most folks do. Note that there are several of them, including the one from Hades, a woman pretending to be a man because it was 1978 and criminals were really sexist, and an evil reflection of Aquaman from Netherspace.

Honestly, how did Jack Kirby not come up with the Anti-Purgatory of Netherspace, where your soul has to linger until it becomes sufficiently evil to go to its final reward (or be sicced on the world of the living)? It just seems so…Fourth World in every way, like Granny Goodness’ orphanage. Ah well, I suppose even the King couldn’t hit all the beats.

With Deadpool riding double on his skis, of course.

“You again! Why must you spoil everything for me???”

Thanos turning out to be bisexual would be an interesting twist, I’ll give it that. Or maybe that’s iconosexual? If you’re all about inevitable mortality, he’s game?

Now I want a holiday special with all the personified Deaths everywhere getting together at a ski lodge on December 31st before they go shepherd the Old Year off to History. Especially that one from Discworld who TALKS JUST LIKE THIS. On skis at some point. Optional about whether DC’s Caine shows up to do a grim twist ending where the mortals at the ski lodge are all killed by an avalanche just before the end. Bonus points if Resurrection Man just happens to be at the lodge and the various Deaths keep killing him over and over again as a prank.

OH, YOU’RE RIGHT. THIS IS FUNNY. DOES HE ALWAYS JUST GET BACK UP?

“So far, anyway.”

The local gaming community used to call those “Friendless Quests” back in the day. To put it mildly, solo roleplaying was looked down upon around these parts.

That was actually my first introduction to him in a treasury when I was a wee young lad. “Wirepoon gun” and Sandy and all. Running into his other form later one was…pretty confusing, to put it mildly. The Kirby guy didn’t help matters any. Vertigo just kept dragging in Sandmen willy-nilly courtesy of Dream. I’m surprised they didn’t do some corporate raiding and nab the Spider-Man villain at some point.

Wesley was retconned into doing something terrible to Sandy, didn’t he?

ISO little death of any size

I think all he did was pass on his prophecy curse. I think Sandy was in JSA comics I read

No, it’s a lot worse than that. In 1974, as part of an explanation for why Wesley went back to his “Mystery Man” style costume, Sandy got retconned into having been accidentally turned into a sand monster by one of Wesley’s experiments at the end of his body-suit days, after which he was secretly kept in a cage in one of Wesley’s lairs for about 30 years. It was another eight years afterward that 1982’s DC Comics Presents finally restored him to human form and mentality and he got set loose - but hey, he hadn’t aged at all, so no harm done, right?

Bloody awful. Possibly the worst thing Len Wein every came up with.

That’s been retconned and meddled with multiple times since then, but the specifics aren’t interesting enough to repeat beyond mentioning he got tangled up with Johnny Sorrow in the 90s and most recently with Doctor Manhattan in Doomsday Clock, who apparently fixed a bunch of broken timeline stuff including Sandy’s travails because Superman convinced him to stop being an asshole. Think he’s still walking around without pants, though.

Not sure if whatever the current version of Sandy is has the prophetic nightmares or not, but he did at one point.

Reasonably coherent wiki page here.

Let’s be fair, though: there are some things that not even the Last Son of Krypton can accomplish.

FPD Central Precinct

Central PD600×400 426 KB

Type: Standard Location
Key Appearance: Flatfoot Adventures #196, October 1958

Traits:

• Suspicious Police d10
• Arrested Criminals d8
• Gawking Bystanders d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• In The Way: A well-meaning officer accidentally gets in the way. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one hero with the Mid die.
• Squad Backup: A young beat cop recognizes the heroes and quickly moves to support them. Roll the environment dice and Boost one hero with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• Breakout: In the confusion, some cells are broken open and a group of small-time thugs makes a run for it. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Escaping Thugs” equal to the Mid die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Lockdown: Someone drops a barred door between the heroes and the villains. Roll the environment die and Defend the next target Attacked in the area with the Max die as the door takes the brunt of the hit.
• Everybody On The Ground!: A group of police officers arm up and storm in, targeting anyone who looks like trouble. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Riot Squad” equal to the Min die. Riot Squad members get +1 to all actions if the squad takes at least two basic actions, and +2 to all actions if every member of the squad takes a different basic action.

Major Twist

• Fire! One of the would-be escapees sets a fire, and it starts to spread fast. Roll the environment dice and Hinder all targets present with the Min die as the sprinklers make everything wet and slick, then create the following challenge: Put Out The Fire

Until the challenge is resolved, at the start of each environment turn, add one challenge box to the total and then roll the environment dice. Attack all targets equal to the Min die. If there are three or more unchecked boxes, instead Attack all targets equal to the Mid die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Stray Gunfire: Who’s firing their gun in such close quarters?! Roll the environment dice; Attack one target with the Mid die, and Hinder a different target with the Mid die.
• Cellblock Tango: A wave of criminals waiting to be processed are breaking out, and the cops are wading in. Roll the environment dice; create one group of Escaping Thug minions and one group of Riot Squad minions, each equal to the Min die.

Major Twist

• Second Wind: There’s a momentary break in the chaos, and some of the dazed combatants get back on their feet. Add one minion to every minion group that has lost at least one minion in this scene, and step up the status dice of all minions once (to a maximum of their original level.)

Over the course of the 1950s, Flatfoot settled into his role as a ‘special deputy’ of the Ferrisville Police Department. Despite being a problem initially, the feud between Company Town and Flatfoot Adventures had proven to be the character’s salvation; by the time the Comics Code came into effect in 1954, Flatfoot had already almost completely abandoned any stories about corrupt officers or politicians, letting those writers work on the Revenant while Flatfoot dealt with more colourful opposition. As a result, the Silver Age version of the character was a member of a thriving and honest police force. The officers were sometimes too zealous, and there were stories where some beat cop or detective clashed with Flatfoot over their belief that he was no more than a mobile tool that shouldn’t be operating unsupervised, but they always ended with Flatfoot bringing them around to his point of view.

Operating out of the FPD’s Central Precinct building, Flatfoot reported directly to Police Commissioner Whitby, and largely had complete autonomy for patrols and investigations, focusing on the field of super-crime and organized criminal activity. Whitby would give Flatfoot tips when reports of super-powered criminals came in, and he would request Flatfoot’s support for major crime busts and make sure that the superhero’s investigations didn’t run afoul of active police investigations, but for most of the 1950s the only part of the Central Precinct that writers bothered to show was Whitby’s office. Various individual police officers came and went, none of them making much of an impact; Flatfoot’s civilian allies such as Colin Harper were more interesting to writers, and there wasn’t much time for socializing when there was crime afoot!

Flatfoot #196 was the first time the precinct served as the focus for a story, rather than just a backdrop. In the previous issue, Flatfoot had rounded up Wise Guy’s gang of mooks. The smart-dressed supervillain knew he couldn’t tangle with Flatfoot directly, but he had a line on just the tough to help him out: he hired the Retriever to break into Ferrisville’s Central Precinct while Wise Guy’s mooks were being processed, in order to free them and bring them back to Wise Guy. While the Retriever burst in the front, the villain slipped in the back, trusting that either Flatfoot would be busy stopping the giant robot, or it would meet with him at the cells and they could leave together.

The resulting chaos led to nearly a full issue of Flatfoot dealing with one problem after another. First he wrestled with the Retriever in the front offices of the building, mistakenly thinking the Retriever was here to kidnap Chief Whitby after it deliberately feinted towards him. He was able to drive the robot off, but the chaos allowed criminals to escape into the streets, forcing Flatfoot to go after them as the police tried to restore order in their own offices. Flatfoot was able to track down and re-arrest each group of villains, ending with Wise Guy himself – the gangster and his mooks were in the middle of celebrating their escape when Flatfoot burst through the door and challenged them once again. With the Retriever having completed its mission successfully and departed, Wise Guy was no match for Flatfoot, and he ended up cooling his heels in a patched-up jail cell alongside his gang.

This was the first time that the FPD was attacked, but it wouldn’t be the last. Over the course of the Silver Age the precinct would be targeted a half-dozen times, and most major Flatfoot adaptations would include a scene of a villain striking at the precinct with the goal of catching Flatfoot off guard or denying him his support. The string of attacks would be one of the reasons Flatfoot would give after his supposed death for why he needed to stay undercover.

Behind The Scenes:

This is sort of halfway between a heroic location and a standard one, but I decided to lean standard because even though Flatfoot kind of operates out of here it’s got a lot of elements that are hostile - escaping criminals, chaotic crowds, that sort of thing.

I wanted to touch on Silver Age Flatfoot’s supporters, and since this is the period in which the Ferrisville police are trustworthy it made sense to create a police commissioner for him. From there I pulled together a quick story, tossed in another villain name that I don’t have a lot of details about but I love the name, and there we go! Wise Guy will eventually get a writeup but I’m pretty sure he’s just a lieutenant who’s an example of the “guy with gang” level of villains that are a lot of Flatfoot’s second-tier opponents.

That’s a really good way to craft an escalating challenge that has immediate consequences if you ignore it for long.

Yeah, no stopping the Big Blue Nudist from letting it all hang out. Just not fair, there are supervillains out there in desperate need of trousers.

Grovedale Museum of Culture

Grovedale Museum600×400 67 KB

Type: Hero Location
Key Appearance: Skybreaker Stories #12, May 1959

Traits:

• Ancient Displays d8
• Haphazard Security System d8
• Dim Lighting d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Whoops: A smaller display piece gets knocked over, and someone has to dive to save it. Roll the environment dice and Hinder whoever agrees to go for the piece with the Mid die. If no one does, Attack the nearest target with the Mid die as shards of broken pottery rain on them.
• Night Tour: One of the museum staff has let friends in for a party, and they’re going to get in the way. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d6 “Drunken Partiers” equal to the Min die.

Major Twist

• Security Alert: An alarm goes off, warning the villains that they’re on the clock. Advance the scene tracker.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• A Relic With Power: The battle has unleashed an artifact with real magical power! It attaches itself to a villainous target. Create a new challenge: Recover the artifact. Until it is recovered, each time the environment dice are rolled, Boost that target with the Min die.
• Lights Out: The lights flicker and go out. Roll the environment die and Hinder all targets in a single zone with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• Wilbur: The old security guard finally wakes up and wanders in to help as best he can, which is usually not very well. Create a d10 “Old Wilbur” lieutenant; he acts now and at the start of each environment turn. Whenever Wilbur takes an action, he rolls twice and takes the lower result; if the lower result is a ‘1’ Wilbur also Hinders one hero with the higher die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Flare of Insight: As the fight passes into an exhibit, a hero learns exactly what they need to succeed. Roll the environment dice and Boost one hero with the Max+Min dice.
• Major Exhibit: One of the major exhibits is in danger of breaking! Create the following challenge: Fix the display before it’s too late!
  Any attempt to fix the display has a -1 persistent/exclusive penalty to it; warn the players about this beforehand. If the display is not fixed before the scene ends, the museum will be in big trouble.

Major Twist

• Disastrous Move: Someone is thrown through a series of display cases, sending glass and fragments everywhere and setting off a piercing alarm. Roll the environment dice and Attack and Hinder all targets in one zone with the Mid die.

The Grovedale Museum of Culture had the unique distinction of being the first location present in a Skybreaker adventure, serving as the opening for Venture into the Unknown #2 and the first appearance of the Celtic hero. While it had very little focus time in that issue, the fact that Rhonda Randall worked at the museum, and got Cooper his first job there as a fellow historian, meant that for much of the Silver Age it served as a location for social scenes, a source of secondary characters, and an after-hours base of operations for Skybreaker. In the early issues, Skybreaker slept in the back of the museum, often avoiding the well-meaning but ancient security guard that patrolled the place, and used its resources in the rare cases when he needed to examine clues to track down a super-criminal. Once Rhonda finally convinced him to get an apartment, the museum remained a common meeting ground.

Starting in Skybreaker Stories #12, the Museum also became an occasional battleground. In his third appearance, the Locksmith decided that while he couldn’t track down Skybreaker, he could trace his steps back to where he had first appeared. The devious villain followed the trail of the shipments that had brought the spear his mysterious employer demanded to the museum, and determined that more such artifacts might be hidden in the collection. Deciding to leave the Spear of Assal for the time being, he raided the museum while no one should be around, determined to get his hands on other mystical artifacts.

Of course, someone was around. Cooper and Rhonda were in the museum lab, Rhonda having stayed late to discuss Cooper’s latest escapades as Skybreaker and remind him that he needed to be careful not to have his secret identity found out. As the criminals overran the museum, the two of them were promptly captured, leaving Cooper with a dilemma – reveal his power and threaten his secret, or leave Rhonda in danger and the artifacts under threat?

Rhonda solved the problem for him, deliberately creating a distraction so that Cooper could ‘run for help’. The hero slipped into the darkness of the museum, drawing his spear and transforming into Skybreaker, as Rhonda was captured by the Locksmith’s men. The Locksmith told Rhond that he admired her smarts, but she had just gone from captive to hostage. He kept her close at hand as he grabbed artifacts, uncovering an ancient bracelet that could summon rains and using it to flood out the street outside and slow the police from arriving!

With Rhonda and the museum both in danger, Skybreaker was forced to use subtlety for the first time since his awakening. He carefully took down each goon in turn, using the museum’s security systems and Wilbur’s assistance, before finally allowing the Locksmith to leave the building with Rhonda and his acquired goods before confronting him outside. Rhonda grabbed the bracelet off the Locksmith’s hands, and Skybreaker took him down, sending him to jail for the first time (but far from the last).

The Grovedale Museum of Culture remained a constant in Skybreaker’s stories from his first appearance all the way through to the Diamond Age. Over the course of their tenure, Cooper Cullen and Rhonda Randall were both employees at the museum, with Rhonda working her way up the ranks from historian to assistant curator to curator by the Iron Age, before having to step back during her early years as Solace. Both heroes continued to work for the museum part-time, but their increasingly complicated schedules forced them to pull back from what had been their effective headquarters; by the Diamond Age, the museum was mostly used as a backdrop for adventures instead of a common meeting ground.

Behind The Scenes:

Our first heroic base of operations. The Grovedale Museum of Culture is generally on the side of the heroes; the only real danger is that all of the stuff in there is going to get broken. I also get to write up Wilbur, who was probably the source of a lot of Silver Age goofs, then returned in the Bronze Age as a semi-retired museum attendee. I think that he’s too popular to lose, so he gets rewound back to his initial age as part of Cooper’s wishcrafted world in the Iron Age. There is almost certainly a 90+ year old Wilbur occasionally showing up in Starshadow.

This is also our first formal Locksmith story. I have a feel for Locksmith’s character, which is ironic because I do not have the faintest clue what his powers are. He definitely has powers, he’s not just a guy with gadgets, and they’re probably in some way related to doing crimes, but no idea what. I don’t think he literally just opens locks, he’s not Skeleton Key. Something more vaguely connected to the theme of “being the guy you hire to break something open for you”.

And finally, while writing up the background for this one, I have discovered that in Volume 1 and Volume 4 of Venture Comics, Rhonda is “Rhonda Randall”. In Volume 2, she is “Rhonda Rhodes”. In Volume 3, she is both “Rhonda Randall” and “Rhonda Rhodes”. So I’m going to have to edit all of that. She is meant to be Rhonda Randall.

Hmmm…changes in marital status, or at least the surname name she chose to go by? For really hackneyed drama, might be one of those “I thought my spouse was dead, but he’s suddenly returned - but wait, he’s actually just a duplicate who’s part of a villainous scheme” deals. That would complicate things.

That would work if it was just a switch in Volume 2, but her mentions in Volume 3 aren’t in chronological order, and Volume 2 has her as “Rhonda Rhodes” while she’s married to Cooper Cullen so she wouldn’t be going by a marital name there. I think I’m just going to admit to it being a goof and fix it up this weekend.

Or, perhaps some Skybreaker issues just had an absent-minded writer like Stan Lee; we all remember the classic heroes Peter Palmer and Bob Banner, right? Sometimes those alliterative names can backfire.

Peter Palmer640×711 77.2 KB

Bob Banner640×298 109 KB

Toil and Trouble

Toil and Trouble600×400 48.2 KB

Type: Dangerous Event
Key Appearance: Champions of Truth (Vol. 2) #4, August 1961

Traits:

• Dark Magic d10
• Fifth Columns d8
• Fear and Confusion d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Tempest-Tossed: Wind spirits erupt from the sky, battering the heroes. Roll the environment dice and Attack all heroes with the Min die.
• Foul is Fair: A blessing settles upon one of the usurpers. Roll the environment dice and Defend a villain target with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• Thunder, Lightning, Or Rain: The storm batters down on the heroes, subtly cursing them. Roll the environment dice. Each hero must choose one of the following: they are Attacked with the Mid die, they are Hindered with the Mid die, or they are separated from the rest of the group.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Dread Dynasty grows in strength! Create a new d8 Dread Dynasty lieutenant. They either have +1 to damage saves or +2 to one basic action.
• Blood Will Have Blood: Strength leeches from the heroes to their foes. Roll the environment dice. Attack one hero with the Mid die, and one villain Recovers with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Give Thee A Wind: The power Coven has unleashed fills a member of the Dread Dynasty with the might of the storm. Roll the environment dice and Boost one villain target with the Max die. This bonus is persistent and exclusive.

RED
Minor Twists

• Damned Be They Who Cry “Hold, Enough”: The storm redoubles within someone’s heart, turning caution to terror. Roll the environment dice and target a hero protected by a Defend action. First turn the Defend into a Hinder of the same size, and then Attack them with the Mid die.
• The Charm is Firm And Good: Spirits are possessing innocent people! Create the following challenge: Break the ritual circle. Until the challenge is completed, create a d6 “Possessed Innocent” minion at the start of each environment turn.

Major Twist

• The Dogs of War: The Dynasty makes a final desperate push. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Devoted Footmen” minions equal to the Mid die. They get +1 to all actions when near a member of the Dread Dynasty. Attack one target equal to the Max die.

Launched in 1961, the bi-monthly Champions of Truth had two major objectives. The first of these was to draw the attention of readers of Venture’s established heroes, Flatfoot and Madame Liberty, to the newly-established or returned stalwarts of the Venture line. The second was to give space for big action scenes and plots that were too complex for one hero to solve. This meant that early Champions of Truth stories especially didn’t spend a lot of time on delving deep into the characterization and supporting casts of the heroes; they had their own titles for that. Instead, that space was given to setting up broad villainous plots before the Champions arrived to stop them.

Because of this, many early Champions of Truth stories featured either a traditional opponent of one of the team’s five members coming up with a particularly devastating plot, as with Doctor Freak in Champions of Truth #1, or two or more villains joining forces to unleash a combined scheme that threatened a city, nation, or the planet. “Toil and Trouble”, the fourth issue of Champions of Truth, was one of the latter sort of story. The Greenheart villain Coven had made a few appearances by this point, but while she had some support she wasn’t taken particularly seriously by readers. To buff up her reputation, and to have some fun, writer Alan Victor decided to combine her with the much more popular Madame Liberty foes the Dread Dynasty, taking on a goofy rendition of Macbeth in which the Dauphin de Sabre sought to overthrow the Royal Family of England and take the throne of the United Kingdom.

The story opened with Coven approaching de Sabre as he and his retainers plotted their next scheme to claim the throne of France. She pointed out the historical ties between the two nations, and prophesized that she saw Dauphin in the Tower of London, wearing the Crown Jewels of England. Her honeyed words tempted the Dauphin and his followers, and they agreed to lauch their assault, holding all of London hostage to claim the crown! Coven called up a massive storm, filled with dark spirits of wind and thunder, and used her magic to reinforce the Dynasty and curse their foes as they rampaged through the streets with the support of the Dauphin’s supporters, the Footmen.

Through Wonderer’s magic, the Champions of Truth responded immediately, taking to the streets to slow the Dynasty down. Madame Liberty and Skybreaker fought against the Dauphin as Flatfoot and Wonderer saved civilians and battled minor members of the Dynasty; Greenheart used her connection to the Green to track down Coven and confront her, breaking her spells and shattering the storm over London. Coven’s prophecy came true; the Dauphin entered the Tower and placed the Crown on his head. But immediately afterwards, he discovered that Madame Liberty had already switched out the jewels, and he was wearing a fake! With no cultural artifacts to use as a shield and no magic coming to save him, he was quickly defeated. Coven escaped into the night, cursing the Champions as the Dread Dynasty was rounded up.

“Toil and Trouble” was a huge success, and Greenheart’s prominence in it began to set the stage for her finally getting her own comic in 1963. The storyline also paved the way for the formation of the Congress of Deceit at the end of the year; while the Dread Dynasty was considered to be too high-profile to take part as Madame Liberty’s nemesis, Coven’s successful showing in this story allowed Victor to slip her in, saving the character from obscurity.

Behind The Scenes:

This started as an excuse to do something fun with the Dread Dynasty and it turned into an excuse to make a lot of Macbeth quotes.

I like this story as an example of the sort of thing that Champions of Truth is up to in the early sixties - just giving big stompy action scenes for a rotating array of Champions villains, growing into the launch of the Congress of Deceit in December. There aren’t a lot of stories for this title early on, since it’s only every other month, but I can imagine a handful of other options for what they’re up to. I expect there are at least three of these double team-ups out of the four issues from #2 through #5. Not sure who, precisely. One of them is probably a Mary Molotov/Steeldriver team-up that gets really out of hand.

Minion needs a die size, even if you’re unlikely to ever generate more than one or two of them.

I know it’s just a typo, but now I really want a Ducktales character named MacBeak in canon. Scrooge and company are already dripping raw Scottsman, how did they not do The Play?

Whoops!

Behind the scenes: I’m writing these up in the word document that will become the final PDF, and that document has a special font for die sizes. When I copy it back into Google Drive, those die symbols vanish and I need to physically replace them with writing. Missed that one.

To The Fairest

The Fairest600×400 373 KB

Type: Quirky Event
Key Appearance: Wondrous Adventures #7, February 1962

Traits:

• High Society d10
• High Spirits d10
• High Strung d6

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Golden Aura: The gathered crowd considers themselves, and are filled with unearned confidence. Roll the environment dice and Boost all targets with the Min die.
• The Trophy Is Mine: A particularly handsome man emerges to claim the Trophy for himself. Create a new d10 “Covetous Fellow” minion and give them the trophy. Until he is defeated, no challenges related to the Trophy can be resolved.

Major Twist

• It’s Him Or Me: Two people are targeted by the Minx and square off. Roll the environment dice and Boost two targets with the Max die. If either of them do anything but Attack or Hinder the other, the bonus becomes a penalty.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Can’t Get It Out Of My Head: The Trophy sparkles in your mind. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target who isn’t pursuing the Trophy with the Max die.
• A Brawl Breaks Out: More and more people want the trophy! Create the following challenge: Break up the brawl. Until it is resolved, each time the environment dice are rolled, Hinder all targets with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Piano Interlude: One person has ignored the trophy completely and is playing piano. The music momentarily distracts everyone from the Trophy. Roll the environment dice and Hinder anyone pursuing the Trophy with the Max die.

RED
Minor Twists

• It’s Mine!: Someone new claims the Trophy. Roll the environment dice and Boost them with the Max die. Hinder all other targets with the Mid die. A target who Attacks or Hinders the Trophy’s current owner may ignore this penalty.
• Not For Long! Suzanne Hightower enters the fray, supernaturally empowered by her desire for the trophy. Create a d8 “Suzanne Hightower” lieutenant. If she holds the Trophy she gets +2 to all rolls; if not, she gets +2 to any action targeting the Trophy’s holder.

Major Twist

• Overwhelming Need: The need for the trophy grows painful. Roll the environment dice and Hinder anyone not holding the Trophy with the Mid die. The penalty is persistent and exclusive. Attack them with the Min die.

The Trophy: Create a one-step Challenge: “Seize the Trophy”. A target who Overcomes this Challenge claims the Trophy from its previous owner and may keep it or give it to another target. The target who holds the Trophy may Overcome against a three-step Challenge to “Destroy the Trophy”, ending the scene. Any successes remain if the Trophy changes hands.

The Wonderer’s early stories tended to be lower-stakes, especially compared to many of his contemporaries. His stories largely alternated between two styles – manifesting to ordinary people to offer them a wish, leading to comic upsets and a lesson learned, or traveling with his young ward Khalil and running into a petty or whimsical supervillain who needed to be stopped.

Wondrous Adventures #7 was one of the latter stories. When Khalil wished to be invited to a ‘real, high society party’, the Wonderer used his magic to transform the pair of them into visiting Arab nobility, securing an invitation to a grand party being thrown by the richest people in Ferrisville (including Hank Ferris Jr., included as a fake-out to suggest he would be the villain of the issue before almost immediately declaring the event a ‘bore’ and departing.) Khalil was having a wonderful time chatting with the children of the wealthy aristocrats as Barquan easily chatted with the adults and considered which one he might offer a wish to.

Before the Wonderer could make his choice, however, one of the partygoers discovered a golden trophy sitting on the central table, labeled “To The Fairest”. Everyone agreed that it was a roaring joke, a take on the old Greek myth. Then they started jokingly arguing over who would qualify, just as if the myth was taking place.

Then the jokes turned sour. Factions formed. The most successful members of Ferristown society began eyeing each other suspiciously, and when socialite Richard Mills suddenly pushed his fiancée out of the way to grab the Trophy, all hell broke loose. The more someone wanted the Trophy, the stronger they became, even able to shrug off the Wonderer’s magic.

The Wonderer had sensed the flow of magic in the area, and he set to work trying to keep all of the socialites from hurting each other while he simultaneously tried to unweave the powerful magic causing everyone to believe themselves the rightful owner of the Trophy, and to find the villain responsible. Over the course of the issue, he managed to keep the various fights and arguments at a comical level, narrowly avoiding a few fatalities. He was aided by Gus Fairbanks, an easy-going man who seemed completely untouched by the situation, cheerfully playing piano while everyone around him raged.

It was Gus’s detachment that made Wonderer realize that the Trophy wasn’t drawing on greed or vanity, but on insecurity. He was the only partygoer who wasn’t worried about his social standing, and thus didn’t care one whit about the trophy. With that key, the Wonderer and Khalil were able to play keep-away with the Trophy, letting Wonderer undo its magic while Khalil rallied the children to the ‘game’ of frustrating their parents, and calm the situation down.

Once the situation was resolved, the Wonderer unmasked Giselle, one of the women who’d been egging on the situation, as the supervillain the Minx. The Minx had the mystical power to bring objects and beings from fables to life, creating chaos and mischief. She pouted about being caught, but admitted that the Wonderer had won – this time! She vanished before he could magically bring her to justice, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that her plot had been ruined – and Khalil had had a wonderful afternoon.

Behind The Scenes:

I had originally planned for these environments to almost exclusively include issues about either one-shot villains or villains we already know about. I’ve mostly succeeded, but I liked the idea of a quirky Wondrous Adventures event and Avarice just did not fit, so we get a new second-tier Wonderer villain. I suspect the Minx is a dedicated C-Lister, who never has a really big defining storyline but has an entertaining enough gimmick as a low-tier reality shaper that people just kind of toss her in when they want to goof around with a classic myth or fable without creating new Venture Comics deep lore. I might give her a full write-up some day, we’ll see.

For the story itself, it’s just goofy. It’s a hot potato that takes time to unspool, and people are constantly trying to grab it from you. The best bet is for one hero to grab it and pass it to a second hero before they get obsessed, and then that hero works on the main challenge, and then a bad guy grabs it and you have to repeat the process.

Well, if no one else is going to say it, Hail Eris!

Eris showed up as a kinda-villain in one of the games I played in, disguised as a little old granny at a county fair’s bake show. Her apple pie caused a few issues, but ultimately we convinced her to go bother a stockholders’ meeting for one of the campaign’s Evil Mega-Corporations instead. They’d been flaunting their legal untouchability in our faces a bit too often.

Weird that I can’t remember Clark ever tricking Mxyzptlk into pestering Lex that way. Surely it’s been done by now?

I could see Minx as only being an instigator of an event never needing a character sheet except when the story she made has her playing an LT in the environment and that would be case by case

Regardless of what form she appears in, if she has a character writeup at all she clearly needs to have an ability that refers to how nimble she is.

“Nimble little minx, isn’t she?” - Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters 1984

Love a good “everybody scrambling for a macguffin” scene. I always thought that a sort of “capture the flag” type scene could be fun to run.

Shades of Aladdin. Speaking of which, now that Wonderer has a villain who can create objects from folklore and fables, has the Minx ever used a magic lamp to try and capture Wonderer and force him to grant her wishes?

That definitely seems like something that she would attempt to do, yeah. She might run into the problem that the Wonderer technically has a lamp, although his doesn’t compel action, it just allows for contact. But I’d be shocked if there wasn’t a storyline in which she changed the rules on him, especially since we know that it’s possible to bind djinni in that way in this setting.

The Zlytaren Nexus

Silvaran Nexus600×400 50.7 KB

Type: Strange Location
Key Appearance: Celestial Travels #298, November 1963

Traits:

• Time Fractures d10
• Crystal Miners d8
• Cosmic Rays d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Entropic Flare: A set of unstable time crystals explode, briefly aging a character. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Mid die
• Oxygen Leak: A damaged wall ruptures, venting oxygen into the nexus! Create a new challenge: Seal the leak. If the scene enters the Yellow Zone before this challenge is resolved, the zone where the leak was is sealed off; anyone still present is sucked into space.

Major Twist

• Ghosts of the Future: Flickering memories of miners from the future attack what they see as invaders. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d12 “Time Shadow” minions equal to the Min die. Step down their status die at the end of each of their turns.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Rewind: Temporal energies settle around a target, reverting them the next time they’re struck. Roll the environment dice and Defend one target with the Max die.
• Internal Disputes: The miners aren’t sure who to support, and interfere with opposing goals. Roll the environment dice. Boost one target and Hinder one of their allies with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• Cosmic Burst: Deadly radiation bombards the area. Roll the environment dice and Attack all targets in a particular zone with the Max die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Unmade: A flicker of space-time winks out of existence, with devastating effect. Destroy a minion or remove any bonus or penalty from the field.
• Perfect Harvest: The shifting eddies bring up a perfect time crystal. Create the following challenge: Harvest the Time Crystal. If the villains succeed at this challenge, they will attempt to flee with the crystal to use in future plots.

Major Twist

• Orbital Bombardment: The Nexus drifts through a star that burned out long ago, flaring it to life. Roll the environment dice and Attack and Hinder every target in the Nexus with the Mid die.

The early 1960s were largely an excuse for Neutrino to fly to whatever strange and mysterious space things his writers could imagine, do some super-heroing there, and then fly away. No one particularly cared about making them scientifically accurate and most of them never appeared again, but occasionally something would pop up that was strange enough that it would leave a mark on the pages of Venture Comics.

The Zlytaran Nexus was such a place. It first appeared in a simple story in 1961, in which it was not particularly interrogated or discussed. It was simply a mine where ‘Time was mined’, with a vague implication that this was a fuel used by interstellar travel. Neutrino saved the miners from a space beast that devoured Time to grow incredibly quickly, and moved on.

In Celestial Travels #298 and #299, though, the Nexus would become a much bigger part of Neutrino’s story. The Interstellar Trading Guild had just made overtures to the Nexus and its workers, but as they sought to bring it into the fold, the region was attacked by Subjugator. She was in search of the powerful time crystals that formed in the nebula’s unusual radiations, and which had the power to speed up or slow down the flow of time. Rumours said that particularly pure crystals could allow for actual time travel, and Subjugator intended to travel back in time and steal rare artifacts before they became rare, so that she wouldn’t have to deal with any of the security that now surrounded them.

Neutrino responded to a distress call from his reluctant ally Lieutenant Heerah, using the ITG’s gates to quickly skip back to the Nexus. After a brief dogfight that saw the Aurora Borealis nearly destroyed, he slipped into the mines themselves, tracking down Heerah and saving her from the Starbooters before challenging Subjugator directly. Her reckless operation was threatening to unleash the temporal energies of the nebula, dooming everyone present, and Neutrino tried and failed to convince her that her goal was just too dangerous.

In the ensuing fight, the Aurora Borealis was destroyed – but at the start of Celestial Travels #299 a stray time eddy *un-*destroyed it, allowing Neutrino to pursue Subjugator as she navigated the Nexus towards the pure time crystals that she had discovered. Neutrino defeated Subjugator and freed the Nexus, but in the battle his own radioactive energies merged with the energies of the Nexus, leading him to spend Celestial Travels #300 hopping through his own timeline, attempting to change history to prevent himself from leaving Earth and ultimately only managing to create the conditions that had allowed him to survive his transformation.

The Zlytaran Nexus remained a popular part of Venture’s galactic network, however. Zlytaran crystals could be used as a shorthand to empower various science fiction technologies, allowing for rapid cloning devices, specialized healing chambers, and stasis fields that could be deployed by individual supervillains but whose extremely rare power source kept them from being something that had to be reckoned with as a common part of galactic life. Over the years the Nexus would be attacked by the Uranians, the Kliz’Exth, and various smaller groups, but without the generations of knowledge that the local miners had developed to manage and live in harmony with the local temporal landscape, none of them were able to hold it for long.

Behind The Scenes:

Time Crystals!

It’s just the sort of absolutely silly science fantasy nonsense that you got in Silver Age comics, it has staying power to be useful for decades to come, it gives me both a new material and a new location, everything about this place is perfect.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to give Celestial Travels a weird place or a heroic ITG base, but the randomizers lined up nicely for the former and here we are! Maybe not as weird as the next environment I’m going to build, but plenty weird enough!

Reminds me a bit of some of the 70s Green Lantern stories where he was just more or less wandering around space running into random one-off situations where he had to figure out what was going on instead of just brute-forcing a solution or getting the Corps involved. Those are really why I like Hal, although honestly they aren’t very typical of what he really is (or even was) overall. That was the same period he had Itty the Space Starfish as a mascot/pet, although that subplot really wound up flopping in the end.

Minor niggle for consistency, this is the only spot (I think) where you spell it that way. It’s “Zlytaran” (with two As and no E) everywhere else I can see. Good place to use find-and-replace just to be sure.

Why yes, I have done some proofreading work in times past.

Hah, good catch!

Went into the book and it’s spelled correctly there. The nexus, as you may guess from thumbing over the alt text for the picture I just noticed, went through a number of name changes as I tried to hit on the most 60s way to refer to it.

Didn’t even notice the Silvaran thing, honestly.

I should add that I really like that sort of double-edged environment twist, since it increases the amount of choice the GM has when selecting targets for narrative effect or adjusting scene difficulty on the fly.

Boy, if you’re down in Yellow status when that goes off it’s a great case for taking a twist to use your Red Dire Control ability early.

Okay, I have to admit that I’ve been very excited to show this one to you all for a few months now. I hope that you are equally enthralled by…

The Riddlemaster

Riddlemaster-Portrait600×400 271 KB

Type: Unique
Key Appearance: Vanguards! #71, September 1964

Traits:

• Reshaping Reality d12
• Rapidfire Banter d8
• Easily Distracted d6

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Face This Foe! The Riddlemaster creates a ‘fun’ opponent for you. Create a d10 minion. It has +2 to damage saves against all damage except for one type, against which it has -2 instead.
• Solve My Riddle! The Riddlemaster gives you a riddle or creates a physical puzzle that needs to be solved. Create the following challenge: Solve The Riddle.
• Until this challenge is resolved, non-Riddle Overcomes automatically fail.

Major Twist

• Okay, I’ll Give You A Hint: The Riddlemaster can’t contain themselves. Roll the environment dice and Boost the next hero to attempt an Overcome with the Max die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Swapsies! Wouldn’t it be neat? Either switch all bonuses and penalties on two characters, or switch one Power on one hero with one Power on another hero for the rest of the scene. Any Abilities that used the previous power use the new one instead.
• Sidequest! The Riddlemaster sets up a side objective for you. Create the following challenge: Accomplish the sidequest. Roll the environment dice and record the results. If a hero solves the challenge, Boost them with the Min die. If the scene tracker reaches Red before the challenge is solved, Attack all heroes with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• Head Over There! The Riddlemaster ‘helps’ a hero advance. Roll the environment dice. Attack and Boost one Hero with the Mid die, and move them to anywhere in the current scene.

RED
Minor Twists

• Why Aren’t You Done Yet?! The Riddlemaster is getting frustrated. Roll the environment dice and Attack one hero with the Max+Min dice.
• Do You Need More Clues? The Riddlemaster gives you another riddle. Create the following challenge: Solve The Harder Riddle. When this challenge is resolved, roll the environment dice and Boost all Heroes with the Max die.

Major Twist

• I Give Up! The Riddlemaster’s frustrations literally boil over. Roll the environment dice. Hinder all targets with the Mid die and Attack all targets with the Min die.

In Vanguards! #71, Realm of the Riddlemaster, an experiment with Doctor Cosmos’ orb went awry, sending the Vanguards careening into a pocket dimension. In the strangely-patterned world they met a strange cat-like alien that called itself the Riddlemaster. Declaring that it hadn’t seen travellers in over a millenium, the creature immediately asked to play with them, promising to help the Vanguards leave if they could solve its games. Captain Bolt refused, but Mr. Infinity felt sorry for the lonely person, and told them that he’d be happy to play for a bit.

The Riddlemaster immediately perked up and began creating obstacles and puzzles for Mr. Infinity. It quickly became obvious that the entire fabric of the dimension was theirs to command, able to create illusions of life and even rewrite the Vanguards’ powers and abilities on a whim. After a series of nearly fatal challenges, with the Riddlemaster lending a hand when they seemed about to lose but adding more challenges every time the heroes seemed about to win, the Vanguards were able to more or less solve its riddles. True to their word, the Riddlemaster opened a portal for the team to leave, telling the group that they hadn’t had that much fun in eons. They apologized for causing trouble, admitting that knew that when the game was done they would be alone again. Impulsively, seeing the Riddlemaster looking forlorn as the group was leaving, Mr. Infinity turned back and told them that the Vanguards would be their friends, and that they would visit again some day. Captain Bolt dourly predicted that would mean trouble down the line, but he couldn’t fault Reggie for his compassion.

The Riddlemaster wasn’t meant to be more than one of the random strange things that the Vanguards encountered, but fate had other ideas. One month after “Realm of the Riddlemaster”, Sentinel Comics unveiled a multi-issue event featuring their own cosmic imp, Wager Master. Seeing the popularity of the blue chaos god, Joe Manzetta went to Kit Granville and demanded more stories for Venture’s own trickster. Granville shrugged and tossed a goofy Riddlemaster story into the mix early in 1965, in which the imp appeared in the middle of a battle between the Vanguards and the Malefactors to ‘cheer my favourite heroes on’, sowing chaos and confusion.

From then on, the Riddlemaster would appear randomly to play with their friends, with an unclear grasp on the line between ‘goofy fun’ and ‘deadly force’ combined with an ever-shifting series of rules about how they could interact with the universe. Sometimes they would help save the day, other times they would make the situation much worse, but they always meant well. Later stories would codify that the Riddlemaster was bound by the same rules that affected gods such as Urak or the Empress of Ash, and had been allowed into Earth’s dimension by Mr. Infinity’s declaration of friendship. If they stayed for too long, they would begin to break down existence and absorb it into their own lonely realm, which was why their visits were so short.

When Doctor Cosmos left the Vanguards to travel with the Celestial Travellers, the Riddlemaster followed her, becoming a recurring character in Celestial Travels while also popping in to Earth to offer new challenges to the Vanguards. Both teams were fond of but frustrated by the godling, and did their best to guide it to better life choices while surviving the nonsense it threw their way. This helped it to stay relevant while the Vanguards were out of the picture in the 1990s, and they remained a minor fan favorite through to the present.

In the early years of the Riddlemaster’s appearances, it would pop up as a man, woman, both, or neither according to its whim; the 2010s codified them as a being that had been non-binary even before developing infinite cosmic power, and who used that power to maintain whatever gender was most comfortable in the moment.

Behind The Scenes:

Back to Hero Forge for a bit, that’s nice.

The Riddlemaster was of course first mentioned back in Deep Cuts as the originator of the Cosmic Mr. Infinity variant. At the time, I mentioned they’d be getting more information, and here they are! As a cosmic imp who is more careless than malicious, the Riddlemaster doesn’t really make sense as a villain, but they’re a great environment. You can also mix and match some of their twists with another environment if they’re getting involved somewhere else.

I do have more Riddlemaster stuff to write up one day, but this is as much as I could fit in this section of the story. They’re definitely one of those folks that gets a few contradictory backstories and eventually one of them sticks; I like the idea that as the 70s go on and people start more directly codifying the idea of ancient godlike beings who can dissolve worlds through their presence, and thus are prevented from travelling between dimensions unless certain conditions are met, the Riddlemaster gets elevated to joining Urak, Balor, Amorta and the Sovereign - but much less malicious, which means that their ability to absorb worlds is actually a huge problem for them that they try to avoid.

In the real world, the Riddlemaster is a tiny bit personal because they’re based on an in-joke between me and my spouse that kind of got out of hand. Spouse had final say on the look, and gave it two thumbs up.

Not to be confused with that Morgon guy from the island of Hed. His title has a hyphen in it, much like Spider-Man.

And one more HeroForge before I’m back to searching for public domain art:

The Red Scare

Red Scare600×400 170 KB

Type: Standard Event
Key Appearance: Liberty’s Dream #24, May 1965

Traits:

• Frightened Crowds d8
• Agent Provocateurs d8
• Hidden Gadgets d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Hidden Traitors: A group of civilians reveal that they’re the Red Scare’s minions! Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Revealed Brawler” minions equal to the Min die.
• Hidden Explosives: A bomb suddenly goes off in someone’s face! Roll the environment dice and Attack one hero with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• Collapsing Storefront: Down with the excesses of capitalism!. Roll the environment dice and Hinder all heroes nearby and any minions they’re facing with the Mid die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Trapped Civilians: Part of the crowd has been cut off from their escape routes and debris is falling! Create the following challenge: Get the civilians to safety. If the scene tracker reaches Red before the challenge is solved, the civilians are hurt or even killed!
• Fake Civilians: A civilian turns out to be a mannequin that attaches to you! Why does the Red Scare even have this? Hinder a Hero with the Max die; the PCs may decide which hero took the bait.

Major Twist

• … Communists? A group of heavily-armed mercenaries in the Red Scare’s colors emerge to fight. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Power-Suited Commies” minions equal to the Mid die. They have +2 to damage saves and to Attack rolls, but leave immediately if the Red Scare is defeated.

RED
Minor Twists

• Acid Spray: A hero walks into the path of a devastating trap and is sprayed with red acid. Roll the environment dice and Attack a hero with the Min die. Hinder that hero with the Mid die. The penalty is persistent and exclusive.
• Locked In: The pattern of explosions traps a hero in a tight space! Create the following challenge: Clear the path. Until this challenge is resolved, that hero may not take any actions except this Overcome.

Major Twist

• The Gig’s Up: The enemies scatter, creating disasters in their wake to buy time to escape. Remove all minions from the scene. For each minion removed, create the following challenge: Deal with the disaster. Any disasters still outstanding at the end of the scene will hurt or kill civilians.

As Liberty’s Dream picked up steam, it often delved into politics in ways that skirted the lines of what was allowable under the Comics Code, with frequent complaints about how close many of Reverie’s opponents were coming to representing law enforcement or business leaders. After the third such complaint, Joe Manzetta went to the title’s author, Quentin Jones, and all but begged him to include a storyline in which Reverie fought against Communists, just to create the impression that the publication cared. With a practiced innocent expression that Manzetta had learned to recognize as trouble, Jefferson agreed. He returned to his office, sat down with his artistic partner Charlie Lake, and laid out his plans for the Red Scare.

Liberty’s Dream #24 thus opened up with Reverie getting wind of strange activities taking place in a run-down part of Havenwood. Small-time crooks were suddenly spouting Soviet propaganda, having run-ins with the cops, and whipping up discontent with the state of the neighborhood into a frenzy. Whispers said that the mastermind of the affair was the Red Scare, a supervillain with the power to unlock the dreams in people’s hearts and bring them to life – so long as they committed themselves to the Cause.

It all sounded very suspicious to Reverie, and more than a little magical. At the very least, she expected that these ‘Communists’ were just looking for meat to turn against America, leaving them high and dry when the bill came due. She arrived in Havenwood looking for trouble, and it didn’t take long for her to find it. There was Communist propaganda everywhere, most of it poorly written and even more poorly articulated, promising free money, an end to long working days, no more bosses breathing down your necks.

But Reverie couldn’t find any trace of magic in the situation. She was just starting to wonder if she was dealing with an offshoot of a Soviet mind-controller like Iron Will, who she had previously fought alongside the Champions of Truth, when the Red Scare announced a major speech that would direct his ‘followers’ to ‘overthrow the Capitalist Regime’. Confused and curious crowds, suspicious police officers, and federal agents began to gather, ready for trouble, and Reverie moved in to make sure that things didn’t get out of hand.

Which they did. Agents of the Red Scare exploded out of the crowd, attacking police officers and civilians alike as bombs went off in local storefronts. Reverie used her powers to save people and stop the provocateurs, only to discover that they were just more small-time crooks in stolen gear. She confronted the Red Scare, only to discover that he was another small-time crook who had been paid a few hundred dollars to put on the suit, and the penny dropped.

Using her powers to race through the Underhill, Reverie emerged at the farthest point across town from the gathering – the Garamond Technological Research Center. There, she was able to ambush the true mastermind behind the Red Scare – the Red Herring! The capering villain had deliberately created a false Communist menace to distract the defenders of the city from his true target, grabbing more high-powered technology for his mercenary schemes. Reverie was able to stop the Herring’s robbery, but he escaped before she could corner him, promising with a glint in his eye that the two would meet again.

Jones deliberately held back the script until it was too late to change it. Manzetta was predictably furious, but after a roaring fight that was audible across the bullpen he reluctantly allowed it. The argument ended up being one of the factors that led to Jones leaving Venture Comics in 1966, preferring to make comics without an editor breathing down his neck.

Behind The Scenes:

This was one of those things that sort of reverse-engineered itself.

I wanted a Red Herring story. I had been plotting out other possible Soviet supervillains to fight Madame Liberty and a villain called “The Red Scare” popped into my mind, but it was pretty close to the Red Herring. And then I thought, “I absolutely bet he would make that a fake villain as a bit” and then here we are.

I wasn’t sure who to give it to originally; I was back and forth between this being a Liberty’s Dream story and a Covert Tactics one, and finally ended up flipping a coin. I like it as a “no, really, anyone can end up facing the Red Herring” thing.

Have to wonder how many times that sort of ploy backfires on Red. Feels like one of those stories where a bunch of Actual Sinister Communist Infiltrators takes advantage of Red Herring’s schemes to try raiding the Garamond TRC at the same time he does. Nice of him to arrange such a convenient distraction, the Motherland will be quick to use this technology against the vile capitalists (who no doubt stole it from some noble communist genius in the first place).

Whirling Scottish Devil was better than Red Scare

(Classic Tick comics)

Probably not often, for reasons of style. The Red Herring is usually portrayed as being fully in control of the situation, at least until the heroes beat him (and even then, half the time he’s managed to succeed at his real objective.) It’s pretty rare for someone to out-scheme him, and if it happened it would have to be a big name, not random folks. Like, I can imagine a story where Iron Will outmanoeuvres him. But since Red Herring is usually willing to get paid to be a distraction, there aren’t a lot of times that people trick him into being one.

And for today’s update…

The Levesque Advanced Science and Technology Centre (LAST)

LAST600×400 60.5 KB

Type: Standard Location
Key Appearance: Madame Liberty #292, April 1966

Traits:

• Advanced Technology d10
• Confused Security d10
• Terrified Scientists d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Collapsing Girders: A piece of the building caves in in front of you. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Mid die.
• LAST Patrol: Advanced security deploys, focused on protecting the equipment from the battle. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “LAST Patrol” minions equal to the Min die. They have +1 to Defend actions.

Major Twist

• Engine Blast: An experimental engine sends out a gout of flame that forces you back. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Max die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Free Gear: Damage to the facility unlocks a gear locker. Roll the environment dice and Boost with the Max die. Give the bonus to whoever acts next.
• Collapsing Floor: A section of flooring gives way, and someone takes a fall. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Mid die. Hinder them with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Security Lockdown: The facility begins lockdown procedures, evacuating scientists and destroying sensitive materials. Advance the scene tracker one step.

RED
Minor Twists

• LAST Resort: Security forces grab experimental power gear and charge in wildly. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d10 “LAST Resort” minions equal to the Max die. Whenever they roll either a ‘1’ or the maximum result on their status die, step down their status die.
• Mistimed Lockdown: A group of civilians are trapped in a zone! Create the following challenge: Reverse the Lock Down. If the challenge is not resolved before a Lab Explosion takes place or the scene ends, the civilians are killed.

Major Twist

• Lab Explosion: One of the labs’ safety features breach in a devastating way. Roll the environment dice and target two adjacent zones. Attack all targets in both zones with the Max die, and then Hinder them with the Min die.

After returning to Europe from her brief arc in Vietnam, the writers of Madame Liberty quickly made sure to focus on traditional superheroic adventures defending European freedom from dangerous foreign powers and criminal superheroes. In November 1965, the team introduced a new supporting character for the title, Pierre Levesque. Levesque was a foppish but brilliant inventor whose father had founded a major industrial company with reconstruction money following the end of World War II; Pierre had inherited the company and largely left it to run itself while siphoning off funds for his personal projects. Fortunately for the company, his personal projects were wildly successfully, and the Levesque Advanced Science and Technology Centre (commonly called LAST) was soon the primary destination for European super-science.

Pierre was first introduced when Iron Will attempted to kidnap and brainwash him during a routine visit to oversee investments in West Berlin; Madame Liberty saved him, and out of gratitude he began supplying her with his latest gadgets for her adventures, providing her with a supersonic one-person jet and various cutting-edge tools that he wrote off as prototype experiments. Marianne actually liked the man, and for a few months there was a subplot about Rick Wilson being annoyed by Pierre’s flirtations, but the pair didn’t go anywhere, and in *Madame Liberty #*293, in May 1966, Pierre was over the moon about his new girlfriend Mina, who he introduced to Marianne and Rick with great fanfare.

Mina made a couple of appearances over the next several months, and it was obvious from the first that she was up to something, but it wasn’t until Madame Liberty #298 that the heroine discovered her secret – she was, in fact, Grand Duchess Gloria Mantalos, the White Mantis, in disguise! She had been secretly dating Pierre in order to steal his designs and technology, and was planning a raid on his facility to acquire everything that LAST had produced.

In Madame Liberty #299, Madame Liberty and Rick Wilson went to LAST to warn Pierre and confront White Mantis, only to discover that she had tricked the staff into thinking that they were imposters and turned the facility against them! The duo had to fight their way through the facility as White Mantis’s raid began, convincing security to change sides and finally saving Pierre from kidnapping by the skin of their teeth. Madame Liberty followed White Mantis back to Granlavia for a major confrontation, which took place in the following issue, leaving Pierre to rebuild his lab.

While that was the first major breach of LAST, the facility would continue to appear over the coming decades, with Pierre a common supporting character who found himself in trouble with an array of villains. During the AEGIS era, LAST was briefly a major AEGIS supplier before Covert Tactics was able to present evidence of the agency’s duplicity to Pierre and convince him to sever his contracts, and he continued to provide technology to a few of his favourite superhero teams without the knowledge or approval of Levesque Industries’ Board of Directions. Pierre eventually married another minor Covert Tactics supporting character, Janie McClinnon, in the late 1990s, and by the Diamond Age was semi-retired and allowing his daughter Cybele to handle the family business while he tinkered in his lab and enjoyed long vacations with his wife.

Behind The Scenes:

We’ve had a lot of tech supervillains, but not a lot of tech companies, so I thought I would use Madame Liberty to introduce a European one and flesh out a few minor characters at the same time. It’s a fun White Mantis plot, a lab whose inventor is neither a superhero nor a supervillain but just an absent-minded professor, and some fun long-term development. Just don’t get the scientists killed!

And speaking of vacations! I am off next week for my spouse’s birthday, so this thread will be a bit quiet. I’ll be back on the 27th, so feel free to keep the chatter going and guess about what environments might be coming up.

Enjoy your birthday-induced time off!

Heh. I’m playing Aether Nexus all of a sudden.

For those who don’t get it, that RPG uses the “Min or Max = Stepdown” mechanic all over the place, usually with some kind of bonus for Max and often with a harsh penalty for a Min that tries to induce a Stepdown below d4. Fairly neat system IMO.

Whew, that’s a rough one on the last couple of rounds in a normal scene, especially if the heroes have a couple of people OUT to mess up their action economy even further. Good argument for taking Red Overcome abilities.

So is that the LAST one?

Until we get back!

Which is now, with…

Cliff’s Diner

cliffs600×400 57.4 KB

Type: Hero Location
Key Appearance: Into the Green #50, April 1967

Traits:

• Breakable Furniture d10
• Loud Jukebox d8
• Busy Kitchen d6

GREEN

Minor Twists

• Wet Floor: The mop bucket spills, covering the floor with soapy water. Roll the environment dice and Hinder anyone on the ground with the Min die.
• A Slice of Pie: There’s only one piece of Cliff’s famous apple pie left! Create a new challenge: Eat some pie. When someone finishes the challenge, roll the environment dice and Boost them with the Max die. If the scene reaches the Yellow zone, the piece of pie is smashed. Remove the challenge.

Major Twist

• The Football Team: The college team is here to celebrate their win. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Football Squad” minions equal to the Min die. When they Boost each other, they roll twice and use the better result.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• A New Tune: Someone sneaks a nickel into the jukebox and puts on some great fight music! Roll the environment dice and Boost with the Mid die. Apply the bonus to any action taken in time with the music until the start of the next environment phase.
• Broken Chairs: Someone gets kicked through a chair, but now there’s chair legs to use to fight! Roll the environment dice. Hinder one target with the Mid die and Boost one target with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Order Up: Cliff tosses a sandwich out of the kitchen for a hero. Roll the environment dice and Boost one hero equal to the Min die. They Recover equal to the Mid die.

RED
Minor Twists

• HOLD IT: Cliff’s yell of annoyance gives everyone a moment of pause. Roll the environment dice and Defend all targets with the Mid die until the start of the next turn.
• Grease Fire: A blast of flame erupts from the kitchen door as Cliff deliberately sets a fire against an enemy who got too close. Roll the environment dice. Attack one villain target with the Max die and Hinder them with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Here, Aspen! Aspen bounds in to help. Add Aspen (Venture Comics: The Classic Years, pg. 130) to the scene. Roll his status die and Boost one hero with the result. If Aspen is already in play, restore his status die to d12 and he takes an extra turn now.

Major Silver Age heroes in Venture Comics had highly variable secret identities, ranging from Skybreaker’s true identity only being known to Rhonda Randall all the way to Flatfoot simply existing as a public hero. Greenheart was one of the more secretive characters, theoretically disguised as Italian exchange student Val Turner at Grovedale College, but over the course of the sixties her secret identity was revealed to a growing number of people, mostly because she was a terrible liar. “Val awkwards fails to hide her identity from various supporting cast members who in turn pretend that they don’t know that she’s a superhero” became a running joke in Into The Green, with a new person learning Greenheart’s secret identity every three or four issues.

Val and Ginnie’s group of friends, all of whom had learned the hero’s identity and gamely pretended that they hadn’t, tended to hang out at a diner on the edge of campus called Cliff’s. The eponymous owner and chef of the diner was never drawn, hanging out in the kitchen and yelling out orders; Ginnie worked at the diner as a waitress, and Val enjoyed exploring the mysterious modern foods that the diner had on offer.

The illusion that her secret identity was secure was broken in Into the Green #50, when Dr. Freak attacked Grovedale with his latest army of monstrous minions, hoping to force Greenheart out of hiding and learn how her powers operated. Freak had no idea who Greenheart really was, and indeed hadn’t considered that she might have a secret identity at all; he believed that she lived in the wilderness and emerged to fight crime. But what he did have was a map of locations that she tended to appear from, and he send squads of twisted animals to each of those locations to flush the hero out of hiding. When the attack began, Val was at the diner with Ginnie and her friends, and panicked as she tried to fight the creatures while covering up her capabilities. Aspen bounded in from the forest to help, but the enemies were everywhere and the gathered students weren’t up to the task of protecting themselves.

After a couple pages of awkward slapstick comedy in which Val put herself in harm’s way to protect everyone without revealing herself, Cliff yelled out from the kitchen for Val to ‘do her plant thing before we’re all et up!’ Realizing that her identity was busted, and with lives on the line, Val revealed herself as Greenheart and crushed the monsters, before racing out to fight them across the city.

In the aftermath, Val returned to Cliff’s to shamefacedly apologize for lying to her friends, only to find them gathered around and ready to shamefacedly apologize for lying to her. They’d known that her secret was important to her, and had been trying to let her live a normal life as much as possible, but that had just caused her to get hurt trying to protect them and keep her secret. Even Cliff admitted (from the kitchen) that he’d seen Val go into the bathroom and then emerge from the alley as Greenheart three different times.

The incident became a running gag both within the pages of Into the Green and in the broader readership, with Val’s not-so-secret identity very slowly eroding over the course of the 1970s before imploding completely in the Iron Age. But Cliff’s stayed a gathering place for her and the friends who were willing to treat her as just a person, not a symbol, and while Cliff grumbled sometimes about the small-time villains that crashed the place, he also made sure to always have a piece of pie at hand for his favourite superhero.

Behind The Scenes:

I got halfway through writing this up as a college bar and then I remembered that heroes weren’t allowed to drink alcohol before 1971 so that was right out. So we get a diner instead!

Greenheart’s secret identity is something that I’ve been musing over for a while; I had indicated in her Silver Age writeup that she had one, but by the Iron Age she’s been written as just being Valeria Tertia and having no real civilian life to speak of. So I thought I would thread the needle and explain why her secret identity faded away.

I think that Ginnie Turner and the college kids never fully vanish from Greenheart stories, but the more that her storylines focus on True Rome stuff the less present they are. Cliff’s definitely sticks around and makes cameos in other Grovedale heroes’ stories, because it’s a fun little easter egg.

Well, sort of. That was pure Comics Code self-censorship, and sure as heck didn’t apply before 1954. There were quite a few instances of heroic (and villainous) tippling in the 1940s and early 50s, and not just in capes books. Any proper cowboy who couldn’t hold his liquor in those days was not going to go very far, and racket-busting mystery men throughout the 30s were still dealing with the legacy of former bootleggers turned generalist crime bosses.

1967 though, yeah, wrong time period for hanging out in a hooch joint for mainstream publishers anyway. Just a little too early.

Oh yeah, should have specified that Silver Age heroes don’t drink alcohol.

I think Silver Age villains were allowed to drink, and possibly even Silver Age civilians. I’d have to check to be sure, though.

Maybe if they were subtle about it? Think I remember some scenes of (for ex) Barry and Iris and/or Ralph and Sue out on civilian dinner dates in the 1960s where there obviously drinks on the table that certainly could and probably should (by the norms of the time) have been alcoholic but that was carefully never mentioned. There must have been a few short bar scenes near the end of the decade when Batman was rousting thugs, and Bruce went to a lot of society parties where expecting people to be drinking soda would have been pretty implausible.

Given the CCA’s supposed focus on “saving the children” anything they thought the innocent youngsters wouldn’t recognize as boozing it up might have gotten a free pass?

Hey Friv (and the other ~5 folks who read this thread)! I’ve got a question for you.

I suppose this question doesn’t really have to do with environments, but I figured it nonetheless makes more sense to ask it here than to briefly Zhu Long the previous thread.

Many “real” comic book characters often have one or more epithets.* Many of these are impressive titles, like The Man of Steel, The Man of Tomorrow, The Last Son of Krypton,** The Caped Crusader, The Boy Wonder, The Amazing Amazon, The Fastest Man Alive, The Emerald Gladiator, The Emerald Archer, The Manhunter from Mars, etc. Then there are also those that are more goofy nicknames, like The Big Blue Boy Scout, The Big Red Cheese, Shellhead, Winghead, etc.

So my question to you is, do you have any of these sorts of names for any of the Venture heroes? Is Wonderer called The Genial Genie? Is Greenheart The Leafy Champion? Et cetera.

And I suppose that this question does relate more to the nitty gritty writing of issues than the broader story arcs which have been your focus, so it does makes sense that it’s largely been unaddressed.

*I imagine the reason for this is that Golden and Solver Age comics typically had narration boxes accompanying every single panel, and reusing the hero’s name that much would be seen as poor taste.
**AKA 3/4 of the replacement Supermen.

Not me personally, although I’ve played at some table where some or all characters either had or grew into epithets - often involuntarily, like a nickname attaches itself to you. Villains tend to wind up with them in-play more often than PCs IME, in which case they’re usually at least mildly insulting and meant to mock the baddy.

The line between epithet and nickname seems hazy to me, now that I think about it. Mister Fantastic strikes me as a purely self-assigned epithet that most folks don’t use (to Reed’s quiet annoyance, no doubt), while Ben’s use of Stretcho could be either a nickname or a mildly sarcastic epithet.

The theory about epithets arising from caption boxes seems reasonable, but I note that they’re frequently used diegetically as well, with other characters addressing the owner with them as though the epithet was a name or title.

The short answer is that yes, those epithets definitely exist, and also that I have not sat down to figure them out. I’ve got the ‘shorthand’ bits that get used for trade dress and occasional crossovers (The Spectacular Skybreaker, The Glorious Greenheart, The Mysterious Madame Liberty, The Fearless Flatfoot) but not actual nicknames.

Skybreaker probably has some playing on his actual heritage - I bet narration calls him the Hound of Ulster sometimes. Flatfoot would have a few robot-themed titles, Greenheart is Champion of the Green in some narration boxes, and there must be some duo phrase for Madame Liberty and Kid Liberty in the Golden Age.

I submit that Flatfoot can be The Mechanical Manhunter.

(later in the character evolution) Digital Detective - Silicon Sleuth

Mechanical Manhunter is great and I’m canonizing it first chance I get. Silicon Sleuth is definitely possible.

But for now, it’s time to say farewell to the Silver Age with the sort of thing that only happens as people begin to chafe against the Comics Code, with…

Kurkani Submarine

Kurkani Submarine600×400 385 KB

Type: Dangerous Location
Key Appearance:

Traits:

• Overwhelming Pressure d12
• Jittery Soldiers d8
• Power Surges d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Burst Pipe: A water pipe bursts, sending a brief torrent of water over someone. Roll the environment dice and Hinder a target with the Mid die.
• Shock Trooper: An elite Kurkani trooper with shock gauntlets attacks. Create a d10 “Shock Trooper” minion. When he targets a hero with an action, he may use one penalty on them as a bonus to his roll.

Major Twist

• Ion Grenade: A frantic soldier deploys a submarine-safe grenade against a hero. Roll the environment dice and Attack one hero with the Mid die. Hinder them with the Min die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Interior Turret: The Kurkani Navy mounts a defense. Roll the environment dice and Attack all heroes near the turret with the Mid die, as well as any other targets in close combat with them.
• Collapsed Corridor: The pressure brings down a section of corridor on a hero. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one hero with the Mid die. This penalty is persistent and exclusive, and they cannot leave their current zone until it is resolved.

Major Twist

• Engine Failure: The submarine’s engines have failed, and it begins to sink to the bottom of the sea. Create the following challenge: Repair the Engines. Roll the environment dice and Hinder all targets aboard with the Min die. Until this challenge is resolved, whenever the environment dice are rolled, Hinder all targets aboard with the Min die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Water Vents: Air is leaking out and water is gushing in. Roll the environment dice and Hinder everyone in a particular zone with the Max die.
• Ionic Field: The submarine’s defenses are still active! Roll the environment dice and Defend a villain target with the Mid die. Boost them with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• Final Thrust: Desperate Kurkani soldiers try to bring the heroes down, even at the cost of their lives! Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Zealous Martyr” minions equal to the Max die. After rolling for their action, a martyr may set the result to their maximum die value +1. If they do, remove them afterwards.

In the late 1960s, beginning with Edwin Sherman and continuing with new writer Matt Solares in 1698, a series of Covert Tactics stories began to wrestle lightly with the question of interventionism and how to best to handle the team’s fights against mad scientists and autocratic powers. Solares frequently used these stories to flesh out the competing drives of Kid Liberty, who favoured an aggressive approach, with the much more cautious attitudes of the Steward, who had centuries of experience in the potential for meddling in other societies to go wrong. Pulsejet tended to side with Kid Liberty, Irogane was more in line with the Steward, and Big Brain would shift back and forth depending on the situation, creating a complex team dynamic that was highly popular. New supervillains introduced in this period were driven by arrogance, greed, or beliefs in their own cultural superiority, forcing the team to protect innocent civilians from the machinations of powerful villains.

The Kurkani Civil War, however, took all of this to a new level. The storyline began in Covert Tactics #82, an issue that barely included the team at all, with the discovery that the small South Asian nation of Kurkan had been invaded and conquered almost overnight by an unlikely enemy – Jonah Drake, the Human Torpedo! The aquatic hero had taken it upon himself to organize a coup against the Kurkani Crown, seeking to dismantle the ‘malignant societal conditions’ that he saw as responsible for decades of violence by instilling strict moral and cultural regimens of his own devising. He believed that he could transform Kurkan into a gleaming utopia within two generations, and had just enough military support to undertake the effort.

Drake had had a run of antagonistic encounters with other heroes throughout the late 1960s. Raised under euthenicist principles, Drake firmly believed that with the proper upbringing and environment anyone could be physically, mentally, and morally upstanding, but he also believed that many of his fellow heroes lacked the moral and environmental training required to handle the problems that they faced. He was particularly harsh to heroes with criminal or difficult pasts such as Madame Liberty or Big Brain; while he applauded their drive to become better people, he believed that their pasts put a limit on how far they could improve and had clashed with several teams already over differing beliefs in how best to resolve dangerous situations.

But even for the Human Torpedo, overthrowing a country and trying to dismantle their culture was a massive escalation. Hoping that Drake’s old ally the Steward (one of the few heroes that he trusted and respected) might be able to talk sense into him, Covert Tactics deployed to Kurkan just in time to discover that the situation had already gotten immeasurably worse. Loyalists to the autocrat king, backed by a mixture of old guard believers and citizens who had been opposed to the crown but were now furious at having their way of life turned upside-down, had appointed Dr. Roach as the leader of their military efforts. With the Kurkani treasury at his disposal, Dr. Roach was using wildly dangerous experimental ionic technology to attack Drake’s military forces, as the would-be hero and the mercenary villain clashed across the country.
In Covert Tactics #83, the team was forced to fight a small fleet of Kurkani submarines enhanced by Roach’s ionic technology, who were planning to poison the coastal waterways to prevent the Human Torpedo from being able to join his forces. As Drake attacked the submarines on one side, Covert Tactics found themselves trying to fight the Kurkani navy and save them from drowning at the same time.

The Kurkani Civil War was a thinly-veiled critique of American involvement in the Vietnam War, but it just barely managed to squeak past the Comics Code by using the Human Torpedo as a rogue actor and not a representative of America. In the end, after a few issues of disasters, the team was able to convince Jonah that his efforts were doomed – he couldn’t force a country to become better, and his attempts to do so were just making things worse. Then, of course, they had to deal with Dr. Roach overthrowing his theoretical employers and declaring himself king of Kurkan. The storyline ended with the country in a cautious stalemate, with both the Human Torpedo and Dr. Roach removed from the equation and the loyalists and reformers entering into peace talks. It wouldn’t be the last time that there was trouble in Kurkan, or for that matter the last time that the Human Torpedo and Covert Tactics would interact as either allies and opponents, but for a time at least, peace was restored.

Behind The Scenes:

So Jonah Drake is kind of an asshole.

I wasn’t actually planning on including the Human Torpedo in my Silver Age stories! I thought it would be a while before he popped up again. But I wanted to do a civil war story that was a critique of Vietnam, but which wasn’t about US forces because that would never make it, which meant needing two villains with very different ideals. And I was looking at public domain art and got a picture of someone swimming at a submarine, and I thought, heck, why not.

And thus we get two Jonah Drake stories in this book! The Human Torpedo thought that he could completely rewrite a country’s culture to make it better, which is one of those ideas that should set off alarm bells and sure did for everyone who wasn’t Jonah Drake. This is definitely not the last time he does this, either, although he probably doesn’t screw it up this badly next time.

Dr. Roach is less complicated. He wanted power, he saw an in, he took it. Which is another reason to be careful of interventionism!

Those would both be post-vacuum-tube era, right?

How old is Drake supposed to be in 1960? Or more importantly, whoever raised him? Because I know enough about the history of the…movement? Practical ideology? Interdisciplinary semi-science? to know that it didn’t last very long in serious academia, mostly from the very early 1920s to late 1950s when Vassar and Elmira were running their collegiate programs. Unless Drake was the product of a very devoted home economics teacher it puts kind of a narrow limit on when his parents could have become so enamored of the concept - or maybe he was raised by an obsessed former professor or something?

Regardless, yeah, an “evangalistic” euthenicist could certainly be a grade-A asshole if they were dense enough. I don’t suppose he made a later attempt using the rather more practical approach of starting a faux religion/cult/self-help movement? Perhaps inspired by the success of Hubbard’s Holistics/Church of Scientology, which started up in 1953 and would have been around and going strong post-Kurkan debacle for him to look at.

“If this hack scifi writer can do all that, surely my deep knowledge of euthenics can manage even better!”

The short answer is that the timeline has some wibbliness in it and was almost certainly the subject of several retcons and re-imaginings over the years, but: in theory, when Drake was introduced in 1940 he was nebulously 17-20 years old, having been raised by euthenicist scientists from birth and just now old enough to go out and fight evil. That would put the scientists who raised him as contemporaries of the Vassar college push, trying a different approach in the very early 1920s. (Probably the writers of the Golden Age stories didn’t actually sit down to make sure the timeline worked, they just declared it according to vibes and moved on.)

In the 1960s, Drake is one of those characters like Kid Liberty whose age is wildly nebulous and unaddressed. If he was living straight through the time period he should be in his 40s, and he’s definitely the same guy who fought in World War II, but he’s drawn in “young man” mode which is typically coded to anywhere from mid-20s to mid-30s. Later on, he’s definitely someone who ages really slowly, something that he claims as a result of his great environmental upbringing and various writers claim to be a result of dimensional energies, Atlantean heritage (that one would really piss him off) or magic.

Wait a minute. Is this guy a bad-tempered aquatic Tom Strong?

Euthenics seems like a good trait for someone who spent time fighting Nazis, whose own wacko eugenics beliefs are thoroughly at odds with his philosophy. As one of my old professors described them “Eugenics and euthenics can be thought of as the ultimate expression of the debate between Nature and Nurture being the defining element of one’s being.”

I’m also amused by the fact that one of the most successful splinters of the euthenics movement when it fell apart is pretty much literally the kind of broad-based home economics they taught us back in the 1980s. Pretty much “adulting 101” these days, albeit with less focus on “race improvement” that Ellen Swallow Richards would have preferred. No idea what modern home ec classes are like, but they probably don’t include learning to use a typewriter any more. Keyboarding and texting maybe, but not typewriters.

Kind of!

I designed the Human Torpedo as a cross between Namor the Sub-Mariner and Doc Savage, and since Tom Strong is basically a Doc Savage deconstruction he’s pretty close to the same archetype.

Gives me hints of the King of Atlantis character from Freedom Earth the Mutants and Masterminds setting. Since pregen M&M characters are copies of Marvel and DC he vacillates between Namor and Aqua-Man. “I’m a member of a world renown team” - “war on the surface world!” - “I protect my planet with other citizens of the planet” - “I sit on my underwater thrown and mope” - “WAR!” - "“Friends”

Alas, poor Human Torpedo. You had a very goofy Golden Age-style gimmick, and yet you turned out to be a dumb jerk.

I don’t know if these are actually accurate for the construction of Flatfoot, but how about the Diesel Defender or the Plastic Protector? Or, well, I don’t know if he’s made of any copper, but there’s also the Copper Cop(per).

And yet, he still didn’t have it as bad as Marvel’s Brock Jones version of the Torpedo, who started off his career being falsely accused of murder and the crimes of his supposed victim, then progressed to be a D-list hero until he met up with ROM, Spaceknight and got his brains eaten by Dire Wraiths…which apparently also happened to one of the two New Warriors who were time-sharing the recovered suit as Turbo??? The heck is with Dire Wraiths and the Torpedo suit?

(sounds of furious online research)

Oh BS. They retconned the Torpedo armor to be Dire Wraith technology intended to fight Galadoran spaceknights and developed on Earth by a human scientist years before ROM showed up? What guff.

I am amused to discover that Volx, the Dire Wraith queen who killed half of the Turbo iteration of the Torpedo legacy was killed in turn by Night Thrasher. You know, Marvel’s skateboard guy. Great performance there, Queenie.

Although to be fair, apparently Night Thrasher has been steadily rewritten into a powerhouse, with more gadgets than Batman, better martial arts skills than Punisher, and his skateboard can transform into a snowboard too. I don’t even want to know why one of the accessories that came with his action figure is described only as “Kingpin’s left leg” do I?

(further digging)

Really? The Michiko half of the Turbo duo (that was the one that wasn’t killed) is the same character that appeared on an episode of the Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur cartoon? I remember the episode, but never having heard of Turbo I didn’t associate the character with Torpedo, Dire Wraiths, ROM, or any of this other stuff. Certainly did not recognize that suit as the former Torpedo armor. One more useful bit of info for playing Seven Degrees of Devil Dinosaur with.

my favorite thing added to Night Thrasher was the 25yr old black man having a 19yr old white son.

Should have mentioned, but due to BC Day updates this week are Tuesday and Friday! It’s a crime, I tell you.

The Crime Club

Crime Club600×400 293 KB

Type: Dangerous Location
Key Appearance: Skybreaker Stories #150

Traits:

• Top-Shelf Security d12
• Mary’s Explosives d8
• Lounging Villains d6

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Booby Trap: Mary Molotov planted a bomb for just such an occasion. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Mid die.
• Sound the Alarm: The club’s staff sets off an alert to offsite security! Create the following challenge: Get the alarm declared false. If the scene advances to the Yellow zone without resolving this challenge, create (H) d8 “Crooked Guard” minions and remove this challenge.

Major Twist

• Lounging Lizard: Lounge Lizard stops in for a nightcap and gets involved. Create a d8 “Lounge Lizard” lieutenant. Lounge Lizard gets +1 to damage saves, and at the start of his turn he steps up his status die to a maximum of d8.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• The Golden Touch: Mr. Midas directs his staff to roll out the armory for his patrons. Roll the environment dice and Boost all villain and environment targets with the Mid die.
• Suspiciously Capable Waiters: The wait staff sighs, grabs the nearest object to hand, and wades in to fight the heroes. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Ex-Con Waiters” equal to the Mid die. They have +1 to Attack.

Major Twist

• The Chandelier! Another one of Mary’s bombs goes off, and the elegant golden chandelier collapses on a hero, showering someone else with sharp shards. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one hero with the Max die. Attack another nearby target with the Mid die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Bringing Down The House: Mary’s bombs are getting out of control. Roll the environment dice and Attack all targets in a single room with the Max die.
• Secret Tunnels: Mr. Midas triggers trapdoors and revolving walls to slow the heroes down while getting his people into better positions. Roll the environment dice and boost one villain with the Max die. Hinder all heroes with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• Misleading Footage: He’s ready for anything, and the cameras have caught the heroes at their worst. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one hero with the Max die, then create the following challenge: Erase the tapes before they’re sent to the press!

Skybreaker #150 featured an unusual sort of alliance between five of Skybreaker’s recurring foes, the most prominent of which was his nemesis Mary Molotov. Crime boss and alchemist Mr. Midas, who had parlayed his ability to temporarily turn objects and people into gold into a small but lavish gang, had set up a new gentleman’s club in downtown Grovedale and Mary Molotov was furious not to be invited. She easily infilitrated the club and laid down an ultimatum – she would prove she was the most feared criminal in Grovedale, and Midas would allow women into his club.

Amused at the idea, Mr. Midas went one step further. He invited three more of Skybreaker’s villains to take part in the challenge – the Lounge Lizard, a small-time lounge singer and part-time supervillain who could recover from almost any injury thanks to the curse he received looking to stay immortal, the Penny Pincher, a man who exclusively stole nearly valueless objects that would create vast amounts of chaos, and Prismatica, whose Rainbow Rowdies had been making waves in Grovedale’s criminal underworld. Mr. Midas issued a challenge to the four villains to put together the most successful and entertaining crimes, with the winner receiving a lifetime pass to his still-unnamed club.

Over the course of Skybreaker #150, the four supervillains launched a series of ever-increasing crimes, as Skybreaker was run ragged trying to deal with the fallout, racing to a new problem as soon as he’d dealt with the previous one and unable to pause long enough to actually catch his foes. As he did, Rhonda investigated the situation and discovered why so many crimes were being pulled at once, leading Skybreaker to attack the club directly to bring a halt to the proceedings. Mr. Midas and Mary Molotov were able to escape, but the other villains were captured, bringing an end to the proceedings.

Mr. Midas was so entertained by the challenge that he not only declared Mary the winner and opened his club to all genders, he gave lifetime memberships to all of the villains who had taken part. Moving his Crime Club underground, he set up a location where Grovedale’s supervillains could gather, brag about their criminal antics, and meet up for jobs and team-ups. The alchemical supervillain moved into more of a ‘fixer’ role, giving up personal schemes in favour of aiding and abetting the crimes he found so entertaining, and soon the Crime Club was a fixture in Grovedale’s criminal underworld.

The physical location of the club changed frequently, and it was raided by Skybreaker, Greenheart, and other heroes on a regular basis, but Mr. Midas was always prepared for heroic attack, with escape routes and traps laid out to make his patrons able to rest easy knowing that they could relax, take a load off, and not worry about getting arrested. Mary Molotov generously provided some of her demolitions expertise to help secure some of the clubs, although her enthusiasm did sometimes mean that a location had to be completely abandoned after the security system demolished the entire building. Still, it was a small price to pay for free explosives!

Behind The Scenes:

Okay, some pulling back the curtain here!

When I was first designing my next book, “Enemy Action”, the Crime Club was a supervillain team that I was in the process of developing. After a lot of back and forth, I ended up replacing them with the Dread Dynasty, but I had a bunch of notes already so I went ahead and fleshed them out as an environment here.

I don’t know if Mr. Midas, Lounge Lizard, or Penny Pincher will appear in future books. Mr. Midas probably won’t, he’s more or less fully-explained here. Lounge Lizard just got a mechanical writeup and there’s really not any more to him than what I listed I think, so he may be good. We might see Penny Pincher in a future volume, time will tell.

I am perhaps inevitably reminded of the supervillain bar run by Emperor Palpatine on that How It Should Have Ended youtube channel. That’s one’s just pure parody, though.

TBH, I assumed you were just joining your fellow citizens in boycotting US-made products, which obviously includes Sentinel Comics. Wouldn’t blame you a bit, although it would be sad to see you go.

On a related note, what do you think the odds are of Canada annexing New York State if it just happened to secede and request sanctuary? Asking for a friend.

Random hero: “What do you mean, his tail grew back?”

Bruce Wayne, making a cameo: “Oh. You’ve got one of them too. Strange coincidence.”

There used to be a comic blog out there that had calculated the raw copper value of the giant trophy penny in the Batcave, but it eludes me now. IIRC it would have paid for a modestly-priced house with it back in the 2000s when the post went up. One wonders what the poor Penny Plunderer/Pincher would do if he were still active in the US these days. Probably go out in a blaze of glory trying to bury the White House or the Capitol Building under millions of tons worth of pennies.

Look’s like you’re missing a key appearance there, bud. From the write-up, I assume it’s Skybreaker #150?

Anyways, neat take on the “supervillain hangout” trope.

I love it.

Well, I have refrained from buying any Sentinel Comics RPG products for the last year.

Well, Penny Plunderer would be real mad!

Fortunately, Penny Pincher is more after low-value things in general rather than pennies specifically, so he’s probably fine without literal pennies existing. He definitely has either a storyline or just a goof at the start of an issue in which he stole several million dollars worth of NFTs on the grounds that they’re actually worthless so it counts.

I don’t know if anyone bothered to stop him.

Whoops, yep. One of the cases where I placed the issue while I was doing the writeup, so it made its way into the book but not the online backup.

A Midnight Dreary

Midnight Dreary600×400 60.8 KB

Type: Standard Event
Key Appearance: Dark Rivers #35, November 1971

Traits:

• Roaming Spirits d10
• Elysium Equipment d10
• Entropic Aura d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Entropic Lash: The veil between worlds tears, weakening the nearest being. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Mid die.
• Moaning Shade: A ghost overwhelmed by pain attacks! Create a d8 “Moaning Shade” minion. It is immune to physical damage.

Major Twist

• Elysium Traps: Elysium’s magic-siphoning technology is everywhere. Roll the environment dice and Hinder a magic-using target with the Mid die. Attack them with the Min die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• The Veil Widens: As the rift between life and death grows, it becomes difficult to know what is real. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Max die.
• Friendly Possession: The ghosts here offer their power to those who will accomplish their final deeds. Roll the environment dice and Boost one willing target with the Mid die. This bonus is persistent and exclusive.

Major Twist

• Overload: The technology Elysium is using to hold the rift open ruptures, blasting everyone nearby with deadly necrotic energies. Roll the environment dice and Attack all non-undead targets with the Max die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Violent Possession: Ghosts stirred up by the fighting attempt to lodge themselves in a target. Roll the environment dice and Attack one living target with the Mid die. Boost them with the Mid die.
• Ghoulish Resurrections: A new thread of the rift threatens to bring the dead to life. Create a “Hungry Ghoul” minion. It has +1 to Attack. Also create the following challenge: Suppress the necrotic threads. Until the challenge is resolved, create a new Hungry Ghoul at the start of each environment turn and each time a living target is killed.

Major Twist

• Drawn Through The Rift: The rift is reaching a deadly level! Roll the environment dice and Attack all nearby targets with the Mid die. Move any targets who take damage to a “The Ghostly Realm” zone. Leaving the zone or rescuing anyone lost within it requires an Overcome action.

In her first two years as a superhero, Veilwalker had to contend with a number of plots by Elysium, Inc. to secure access to necromantic power. Elysium was hoping to industrialize the afterlife, using it for long-distance transportation, powering devices, and developing labour forces of spirits and ghostly beings. Their holy grail was to develop a reproducible method of ensuring that the dead would rise as ghosts, allowing them to sell immortality to the highest bidder.

As a rule, these experiments were carried out without any real care for who might get hurt in the process, turning innocent ghosts into agony-driven shades and giving random individual mystical powers that were very dangerous to their health and well-being. Elysium test subjects made up a third of Veilwalker’s opponents through 1969 and 1970, as she struggled to find a way to prove that they were responsible for the problems she was facing while also working to understand and develop her own powers, manage her personal life, and deal with the mystery of Asphodel and her own connection to the corporation and to Karita.

A Midnight Dreary was the two-part story that brought everything happening to Karita to a peak, and ended her first major story arc. As the story began, Veilwalker had been struggled over the past few issues with the mysterious Ravenmaster, a ghostly visitor who was stalking her for Elysium and trying to steal her magic away from her with his own tricks. His efforts were complicated both by the fact that he didn’t want to be doing it, being in thrall to Elysium, and the fact that Asphodel was secretly sabotaging his efforts in an attempt to protect her daughter from harm, but not so much that she couldn’t get useful data and power from him.

But Asophodel couldn’t stop the Ravenmaster forever, and in “A Midnight Dreary” he finally succeeded in laying a trap that neither he nor his mistress could sabotage. Veilwalker was lured to what she believed was an attempt by Elysium to capture a group of restless shades, but the site was actually intended to harness her own powers and steal her magic for the corporation to study. But Asphodel had thoroughly misunderstood how her daughter’s magic worked. She thought that Karita’s power came from within her, but she was just the conduit for it. The machines went haywire, connecting to necrotic essence so powerful that it took control of them and began to tear apart the veil between the living and the dead. As Asphodel scrambled to claim as much power as possible and the Ravenmaster spitefully egged the magic on to secure his freedom, Veilwalker was forced to try to contain the power, calming the spirits it was unleashing and sealing the rifts it was creating.

As the situation grew out of control, Asphodel was forced to choose between her research and her daughter. As a powerful rift threatened to pull Veilwalker back into the spirit realm forever, Asphodel used the accumulated energies of her gear to push Karita to freedom, dragging herself and the Ravenmaster into the depths of the afterlife. In her final moments, she revealed her true self to her daughter, and apologized for everything that she had done – and then she was gone, leaving Karita to struggle with the complexity of her mother’s latest cruelties and the sacrifice that she had made.

Asphodel would return, of course, as would the Ravenmaster, but her departure left Elysium in a shambles, and set the stage for Veilwalker to be able to focus more on the spirit world for the next few years. That story shift drew her into the Dread Depths crossover in the next year and set the stage for the formation of the Twilight Carnival.

Behind The Scenes:

For Dark Rivers, I wanted something that would touch on the storyline before Dread Depths kicks off and starts drawing Veilwalker more fully into the broader universe. I wasn’t sure whether to do something with her mother, or with the lost magical champions, but this came together nicely I think! We have the story of how she learned about Asphodel, a bit of complexity to their relationship for when Asphodel returns, and hints of a new villain who I may or may not develop further in the future.

Needs a die size, maybe dependent on an environment dice roll.

Ah, late stage capitalism, the gift that never stops giving - to greedy, unethical billionaires, anyway. 1971 is a bit early for that theme, although individual evil businesses have always been with us in comics.

Depressing that being a mere millionaire is no longer a sufficient qualifier for true top-tier evil.

The Polymath font is saving my books and killing my copy/pastes. Every time. Hungry ghoul is d8.

Yeah, in 1971 Elysium is very much just a “mad science company” rather than a commentary on capitalism as a whole, although that probably starts to shift as time goes on (and definitely shifts by the 2010s thanks to a little project I worked on in the Realm of Discord that created three 2010s stories for an Elysium subsidiary to be discussed in the future.) They’re still focused on things like “making products” and “long-term planning” and “employee retention” (even if one of their primary vehicles for employee retention is turning employees into ghosts.)

Journey To The Centre Of Half-Life

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Type: Quirky Event
Key Appearance: Fallout #30, April 1973

Traits:

• Radioactive Blood d10
• Rapidly Fissioning Immune System d8
• Antimatter Antibodies d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Cell Structure: A blood vessel suddenly splits, carrying someone far away into a duplicate channel. Move one target or close group of targets to a new location.
• Ultraviolet Blood Cells: Half-Life’s radioactive immune system lashes out Roll the environment dice and create a number of d6 “Ultraviolet Blood Cell” minions equal to the Min die. Note how many cells were created. When a group of Blood Cells Attack all different targets, roll each minion’s die and use the highest result for each Attack.

Major Twist

• Subconscious Willpower: Half-Life is trying to help. Roll the environment dice and Boost all heroes with the Mid die. These bonuses must be used on the heroes’ next rolls.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Fissioning Mitochondria: A nearby cell wall ruptures in a radioactive spray. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Max die.
• Internal Bleeding: You’ve found a danger area! Create the following challenge:
• Fix the damage. Any bleeding still present at the end of the scene results in long-term injuries to Half-Life.

Major Twist

• Red Blood Cells: A flow of oxygen and energy reinforces the immune system. Roll the environment dice and Boost and Defend one environment target with the Mid die.

RED
Minor Twists

• Cancer Cells: Monstrous, voracious cancers attack everything in sight. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Cancer Cells” equal to the Max die. Note how many cells were created. Whenever a Cancer Cell destroys or incapacitates a target, step up its status die.
• Sneeze: Half-Life sneezes. Roll the environment dice and Hinder all non-environments with the Max die. Attack them with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Rapid Fission: Half-Life’s dimensional power tries to repair the damage being caused. For every two Ultraviolet Blood Cells that have been created, create one more. For every three Cancer Cells that have been created, create one more.

After a strong opening year, sales of Fallout began to go through a pattern of slipping and recovering. Introducing Isotope and building up the 238s as an ongoing threat kept sales strong through 1971 and much of 1972, but by early 1973 readers were drifting away again. In an effort to maintain the line and draw in new readers, the collection of writers and editors who were in the process of forming into the Political desk decided to help codify Half-Life into their world through a crossover with the highly popular Covert Tactics team. The two-parter took place in April 1973 and bucked the trend of many stories, giving Half-Life most of the pagecount of the initial Covert Tactics #133, and putting Covert Tactics front and centre in Fallout #30.

The lead-in to the story was simple enough – as Half-Life infiltrated a Neulyon lab belonging to the 238s, Covert Tactics was called in to deal with the radioactive outlaw, believing him to be the result of a super-science mishap who was a danger to himself and others. The team didn’t buy the story that Half-Life had created the nuclear explosion in Santa Juanita that changed his powers, but they did believe that he was unstable and potentially dangerous, and hoped that they could talk him down. Instead, they infiltrated a full-scale battle between Half-Life and Atomizer, a new member of the 238s with size-changing capabilities. Atomizer had lured Half-Life into a trap with the goal of infiltrating him and stealing the dimensional energies in his core, enabling the creation of new fissionable super-soldiers – and in the climax of Covert Tactics #133, he succeeded at the first stage of his goal, shrinking down and injecting himself into Half-Life’s veins! Half-Life’s body actually began to fission and grow unstable, threatening to detonate in the facility, which was still in the process of trying to lock him down.

Fortunately for the team, Big Brain was able to quickly analyze and activate Atomizer’s technology, using one of his robot drones. With Half-Life’s permission, the team entered the hero’s body to pursue Atomizer and stabilize the nuclear hero’s body. As Half-Life and Kid Liberty battled outside, the Steward, Pulsejet, Irogane, and Big Brain entered his body and began to do battle with his overcharged nuclear immune system, hunting down Atomizer and reversing the damage he was doing step by step.

The battle was hard-fought, with several pages delivered to the artist with the instructions to ‘draw something really wild here’. After most of an issue of struggling through Half-Life’s impossible anatomy, Covert Tactics was able to capture Atomizer, escaping through Half-Life’s mouth moments before Atomizer’s energies would have overloaded his body. With the 238s brought to justice, Covert Tactics agreed that Half-Life had ‘vanished in the confusion’, letting the undercover hero continue his quest but warning him that they might be sent after him again in the future.

While the issue was a fairly clear pastiche of Fantastic Voyage, and was largely an excuse to have Covert Tactics show off their capabilities in a particularly weird setting while Half-Life and Kid Liberty exchanged sardonic quips and fought gangsters, those were two things that comics readers were big fans of. The crossover was a huge success, and Half-Life’s grungier approach to the same sorts of problems Covert Tactics was dealing with brought a wave of new readers to Fallout, sustaining the comic and ensuring that Half-Life would become the more well-known version of Trevor Finn’s two heroic identities.

Behind The Scenes:

A lot of the ways that I design environments in the first stage is to look at the years I’m working with, see which titles haven’t had any issues recently, and then make something. I wanted a Fallout title for the Bronze Age, and I noticed that I’d made a quick note in my timeline about a Covert Tactics - Fallout crossover in 1973. Then I got “Quirky Event” and I was like, well, that won’t work, that crossover isn’t going to be quirky…

… or is it?

Because the idea of doing Fantastic Voyage but the body is radioactive and constantly splitting was hilarious to me. So here we are!

Is the second Antibodies a typo, or some kind of Inception-style joke I’m missing?

Mitochondria? Ahhh!!! It’s Parasite Eve, but now she’s radioactive! That can’t be good!

Probably ought to note that they’re minions as you did with the UBCs even though it’s obvious they aren’t lieutenants.

Ah, geez, Ultraviolet Blood Cells is a nod to Paranoia, isn’t it? They’d be the ones in white to human vision, anyway.

Cue that anime trope where a character sneezes violently when people elsewhere are talking about him.

I wonder, if you talk about someone while standing on their future grave, do the sneezes and sudden chills emulate catching a bad cold?

Great advice with an artist like Kirby or Ditko or Steranko where backing off and letting them do their thing is best. Maybe a recipe for disaster with a hack.

Tell me Atomizer winds up in a prison fight over that supranym with some lifer inmate who used to be a villain that used gimmicked perfume sprayers in the Golden Age. Bonus points if he loses after getting spritzed with aerosolized nuclear dampening material and has to go by “Tiny Bad Guy” thereafter. It’s the Tick and Barry all over again!

Fantastic Voyage references aside, I’m also inevitably reminded of the Star Trek TAS episode “One of Our Planets Is Missing” which also featured antimatter-based exotic biological features (albeit those were part of the digestive system IIRC). One of the best of that series, even if it does have some obvious parallels to “The Immunity Syndrome” over in TOS (aka the giant space amoeba one, which inspired one of my favorite silly Avalon Hill games ever). Unlike the TOS episode, the ending in TAS cleaves to Roddenberry’s optimistic view of the Federation and turns into a first contact situation instead of a monster hunt.

Typo. I think something got copy/pasted weird. And I’ve been absent a bit, hence the slight delay in replying, but I’m just in time for…

The Launch Pad

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Type: Heroic Location
Key Appearance: Fly Boy #21, June 1975

Traits:

• Jury-Rigged Gear d10
• Loads of Scrap d10
• A Handful of Traps d6

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Oil Spill: The fight knocks into a shelf and a drum of oil spills Roll the environment dice and Hinder anyone near the shelf with the Min die.
• Suit Activation: One of Fly Boy’s suit parts starts blasting fire randomly. Create a new challenge: Shut down the part. Until the challenge is resolved, whenever anyone rolls a ‘1’ on a die, they take 1 irreducible damage.

Major Twist

• Get the Goods: A wall safe pops open, spilling out gadgets for the heroes to use. Roll the environment dice and Boost all heroes with the Mid die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Jury-Rigged Shield: A chunk of scrap falls down, creating an improvised shield. Roll the environment dice and Defend one target with the Max die.
• Hey, What’s Up: Denise Fields stops by to say hello, just in time to wander into trouble! Create the following challenge: Get Denise out of there! If the challenge is not resolved by the time the scene enters the next zone, Denise takes a stray.

Major Twist

• Power Surge: Fly Boy’s workshop overloads and a blast of electricity slams into a nearby target. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Mid+Min dice.

RED
Minor Twists

• Sinkhole Trap: A carefully designed trap gives way, plunging someone into a restraining pit. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Max+Min dice.
• Uncertain Gadgets: A pair of gadgets fall out, and two people scramble to grab them. Choose two volunteers. Roll the environment dice, and randomly Boost one of the two with the Mid die. Hinder the other one with the Min die. Both the bonus and the penalty are persistent and exclusive.

Major Twist

• Come To Light: The growing chaos explodes outwards, leaving the Launch Pad in shambles. Each hero must choose between making an Overcome to deal with the disaster, or flee. If at least half of the heroes Overcome successfully, roll the environment dice and Hinder them with the Mid die as they have to focus on the problem. If fewer than half of the heroes Overcome successfully, roll the environment dice and Attack all targets still inside with the Max+Min dice, and the Launch Pad’s location is revealed to the general public.

When Fly Boy began his battles against the Man, he quickly found that he needed somewhere to work on his suit, gather supplies, and stash gear that he’d recovered from the Company supervillains he was facing off against. In the first few issues of Fly Boy that place was his junkyard, but after a near miss with a wrist rocket launcher system in Fly Boy #5 he realized he needed somewhere that wasn’t directly connected to his civilian identity.

Fortunately, Tyrone’s friend and occasional flame Denise Fields was able to lend a hand. She’d found out his secret identity in Fly Boy #4, when he saved her from a gang of Company thugs trying to burn down her family’s restaurant, and was eager to help protect the neighbourhood. She also knew where all of the derelict and run-down garages, warehouses, and supply sheds in the area were, and who would be happy to take a bit of money to rent them out on the down-low without needing ID. With her help, Tyrone moved his gear to a burned-out auto shop and converted it into his Launch Pad, where he could stash the parts he was working on and the gear he saved for a special occasion.

It lasted fifteen issues before the Company burned it down.

Beth Horton, who had been lured back to Venture with promises of creative control after the end of Liberty’s Dream a couple of years earlier, had originally planned to have the Launch Pad be a proper secret lair that Fly Boy could use for his campaign. But Horton had been struck by the fact that Fly Boy was winning a lot of victories and it made the Man feel less like an overwhelming threat and more like a generic supervillain. She wanted Hank Ferris to be a dangerous nemesis, and the best way to do it was to give him some wins. So in Fly Boy #20, Ferris was able to analyse the superhero’s appearances, and track him back to his base of operations, and in Fly Boy #21 he sent some of his best operatives to take the place out and kill anyone who was present.

Tyrone was in the garage working with the Company attacked, and he quickly suited up to fight back. In the middle of the fighting, however, Denise arrived, hearing a commotion and determined to help. Fly Boy was too focused on the enemies he was fighting, and Denise took a stray bullet in the confusion and went down. Making a split-second decision, Fly Boy abandoned his base and flew Denise to a hospital whose staff he trusted not to spill her location, leaving his enemies to loot his gear and burn his lair to the ground.

The setback would lay the groundwork for a dynamic that would persist over the next several years. Tyrone would find a new location, set up his garage and gear, and start rebuilding, but it would only be a matter of time before corrupt police, Company goons, or Ferris Industries developers showed up and he had to clear out in a hurry. Traps and alarms could only go so far, especially since Tyrone was determined not to install anything that might accidentally hurt a neighbourhood kid poking around or a homeless person looking for a place to crash for the night. Instead, he kept his best pieces at home, and resigned himself to having to put his secret base back together each time that it became a little bit less secret, leaving himself more on the back foot than many of his fellow heroes and creating a sense that he was always struggling on the verge of being caught out for good – a dynamic that Horton successfully predicted would endear him to many readers and distinguish him from the competition.

Behind The Scenes:

I really like how this one turned out.

Giving Fly Boy a proper base of operations seemed like a great plan, but I wasn’t sure how to differentiate it from other hero bases. The randomizers gave me a ‘devastating unique twist’ for Red, and the most devastating unique twist I could think of was “whoops, everyone knows where your lair is”. But then that had to actually be something that was a threat in the story, or else why is it a twist?

Which led to “yeah, Fly Boy loses his HQ more often than you would expect from a superhero”, which fits the grungier DIY nature of his character really well and leads into some fun storyline bits.

I’m reminded of a short Champions campaign (one of only three I ever played in, despite being something of a fan from 1st to 4th edition) where the PC group had invested in a base with 3d6 of Unluck. It got wrecked and relocated pretty often too, at one point being abducted by aliens of all things, although we eventually made them put it back.

One of the characters was largely built around being able to lift almost anything and fly off with it, which helped considerably with the relocations. 3rd edition was still pretty silly as I recall.

Emmett’s Ridge

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Type: Strange Location
Key Appearance: Cryptic Trails #33, February 1977

Traits:

• Non-Euclidean Trails d8
• Bitter Winds d8
• Mystical Wildlife d6

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Twin Gravities: A character takes a wrong step and finds themselves standing sideways on the cliff wall. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Mid die.
• Bolstering Winds: The cold wind grabs at the mountain-goers, pushing them towards conflict. Roll the environment dice and Boost any target seeking violence with the Min die.

Major Twist

• Pine Wolves: With a growl, a pack of needle-covered wolves emerge from the woods. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Pine Wolf” minions equal to the Min die. When Pine Wolves reduce damage with a Defend, they also Attack their attacker equal to the damage reduced.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Rockfall: Rocks collapse upwards from below an unsuspecting target, flinging into the sky. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Mid die. Reactions may not be used against this Attack.
• Crag Bear: A bear with rock-skinned fur erupts from the mountainside with a roar of rage. Create a d8 “Crag Bear” lieutenant. It has +1 to Attacks and damage saves.

Major Twist

• Forked Paths: The pathways suddenly twist in impossible ways, scattering the heroes and their foes. Create four new zones. Each target or minion group rolls a d4 and is moved to the zone matching the number rolled.

RED
Minor Twists

• Molasses Wind: The wind curls around everyone in a particular location, protecting them from harm. Roll the environment dice. Defend all targets with the Max die until the start of the environment turn.
• Cloud Hawks: The clouds dissolve into a flock of furious hawks that divebomb heroes and villains alike. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Cloud Hawk” minions equal to the Max die. They may move between locations and still act normally.

Major Twist

• Lavalanche: The snows boil and rock melts as the side of the mountain seeks to destroy the woods. Roll the environment dice and note their values. Attack every target in one location with the Mid die. At the start of the next environment turn, Attack every target in a second location with the Max die. At the start of the next environment turn after that (if applicable), Attack every target in a third location with the Max+Min die.

The Weird West stories of Cryptic Trails created a network of strange locations and magical environments in the region around Lostwood, but with an unusual twist compared to many superhero comics. Instead of the hero being the one to explore a remote place and learn its secrets, Winter Wolf was already very familiar with all of the natural realms near his home. He knew how to protect them, and how to move peacefully through them. Explanation of these places was therefore usually given either in a monologue from the sasquatch hero to his foes, or when he was helping to protect humane or monstrous civilians who had wandered into a place where they were not safe.

Emmett’s Ridge was one of those places. According to Winter Wolf, there was a powerful spirit slumbering beneath the mountain, and her dreams caused life and land to mingle and drift, creating animals and plants with strange capabilities and unusual needs. Winter Wolf was not an ally of the mountain, but he knew how to slip past the mundane surface of the place and interact with its magic safely. In Cryptic Trails #33, a mining camp was set up on the mountain, and Winter Wolf knew that it was only a matter of time before the mountain’s spirit woke and its fury killed the hapless miners. But when he tried to warn them, they hired the Bickerton Agency to ‘clear out the monster in the woods’. Sensing an opportunity to test a new asset, younger brother Rudolph Bickerton used necromantic magic to summon the Boot Hill Monster, trusting that the undead gunslinger would be just the thing to defeat a sasquatch gunslinger once and for all. Winter Wolf found himself hunted along the crags of Emmet’s Ridge, as the mountain slowly woke to fury.

Winter Wolf was able to turn the mountain to his advantage, burying the Boot Hill Monster in an avalanche of molten snow that solidified into solid ice. The mining camp was abandoned safely in the chaos, with the hero escorting them secretly to protect them from the mountain’s wildlife and lull it back to sleep. The Bickertons would make a few more efforts to crush the magic of Emmett’s Ridge, steal what they could and kill the rest, but the mountain proved too powerful for them, and Winter Wolf was always able to contain the fallout.

Emmett’s Ridge would return in the 1990s in Twilight Carnival. In that grim tale, it transpired that the mountain’s spirit had been driven comatose by mining operations in the 1950s, and Emmett’s Ridge was no longer officially magical. As the mines dried up, the town of Emmett’s Ridge shrank back down in size, becoming a strange place with a stranger people touched by the slumbering nightmares of the mountain spirit. Most people never saw the mystical side of the mountain, but at the right times and with the right steps, hikers and tourists could find themselves wandering into the mountain’s reflection, trapped in the magic and unable to escape. The Twilight Carnival helped to calm the mountain spirit and begin restoration efforts, but the mountain remained a place that popped up from time to time for magical tales and weird mysteries.

Behind The Scenes:

For Cryptic Trails, I wanted a natural site that was more than a little unnatural, and a weird mountain where animals have plant or rock or wind mixed into them sounded like a fun time! It gets to be a proper Weird Locale in the past, and then turns into Definitely Not Twin Peaks in the 90s, before probably bouncing between the two over later comics. I may make use of it for a future story I have in mind, which I was deciding where to place…

I like that one a lot. Manages to give off a strong “American tall tales” vibe without actually using any of the usual suspects like hoop snakes or sidehill gougers or hodags. In that respect, it reminds me strongly of Manly Wade Wellman’s short story Desrick on Yandro, which includes a slew of folkloric cryptids, some “real” and others apparently of his own invention .

Being compared to anything Wellman wrote is high praise indeed, I might add.

Yup, ditto on nailing some nifty vibes for this one, Friv. It’s got a lot of verified weirdness going on, but without quite veering into the four-colour supers aesthetic.

Thank you both! I’m glad that it landed well. It’s a neat location and I’m definitely using it more in the future. And speaking of neat locations… this next one rolled as an event but it didn’t end up as one, so…

The Iron Court

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Type: Dangerous Location
Key Appearance:

Traits:

• Metal Monsters d10
• Choking Smog d10
• Faerie Labourers d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Flame Plume: A metal flower blooms, sending out a blast of black flame. Roll the environment dice and Attack one target with the Mid die.
• Smoke Screen: Ashen smoke drifts down, covering a fae soldier and filling them with dark focus. Roll the environment dice and Boost one faerie target with the Mid die.

Major Twist

• The Clock Strikes Three: The sound echoes through the Court as the next work shift approaches. Advance the scene tracker one space.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Army Ants: Metal-shelled ants the size of large dogs burrow out of the ground and attack! Roll the environment dice and create a number of d6 “Army Ant” minions equal to the Mid die. Each Ant adds the number of other Ants in its group to its damage saves.
• The Clock Strikes Six: The Iron Court’s furnaces roar to life as the sound of the bell echoes through the Reach. Create the following challenge: Extinguish the Furnace. If the challenge is not resolved by the time the environment enters the next zone, roll the environment dice and Boost all villains with the Min die. The bonus is persistent and exclusive.

Major Twist

• Blistering Heat: The power of the forges is creating deadly heatstroke. Roll the environment dice and Attack all mortal targets with the Mid die. Hinder any target who takes damage with the Min die.

RED
Minor Twists

• The Clock Strikes Nine: Workers begin to emerge for their shifts, setting machinery in motion and putting the realm to work. Roll the environment dice and Hinder all non-fae targets with the Max die.
• Factory Floor: The factory’s machinery is growing hotter, melting down metal trees and cutting off locations from each other behind walls of falling magma. Create the following challenge: Cool the factory. Until the challenge is resolved, any target that moves between locations or exits the Reach must roll a d8 and take that much fire damage.

Major Twist

• The Clock Strikes Thirteen: The next shift arrives; it is time to leave. Create (H) d8 “Zealous Labourer” minions. Roll the environment dice and Boost each of them with the Max die.

As the Mystical desk grew increasingly strange, Madame Liberty and Reverie found themselves facing off against increasingly esoteric and unusual foes. Given free reign to write whatever stories interested her, Shannon Pace spent time playing with the nature of the world that her heroes were facing against, culminating in the creation of an entirely new branch of the fae courts that would prove deliberately short-lived, but whose manifestation echoed through the next couple decades of comics.

Courtless Meg had sought to regain her powers by stealing the courtly connections of other faeries, causing them to wither. She rampaged through the Underhill, and while Reverie and Madame Liberty were able to ultimately blunt her advance, many of her victims were cut off from the courtly magic that they had relied on to exist. In response, they began to gather together, looking for new sources of magic and ideology that they could transform into a courtly structure, and formed the Courts of the Forge. The Golden Court believed that the purpose of existence was hedonism, seeking pleasure above all else and tricking humans into bargains to serve them so that they would have to spend less time caring for themselves. The Glass Court believed that the purpose of existence was non-existence, deliberately seeking to fade away and leave no impact on the world. They did not end up becoming a major part of comics.

But the Iron Court believed that the purpose of the world was industry. They had been tricked by Courtless Meg because they had fallen for the lure of individual success, and the only solution was for every faerie of the Iron Court to cast their motivations and goals into the fire. When all were equal, none would suffer. When all were productive, none would be exalted.

The Iron Court abducted the Soviet hero Lockstep, trying to learn the ideology of equality from him and use it to their advantage. Excited at the opportunity to spread Communist doctrine to an entirely new species, Lockstep quickly found that the fae were far-too-able learners. They took his words literally, extinguishing their individuality and identities to become a nearly mindless, ever-ravenous, identity-destroying hive mind that spoke empty words of unity while tearing apart their countryside for resources.

As the Iron Court began to threaten the rest of the Underhill, Madame Liberty and Reverie found themselves up against a caricature of Communist ideology, a monster that even Lockstep recognized he had lost control of. There was no pride, no community, and no hope within the Court, only workers building weapons to conquer territories to seize workers to create weapons. He reluctantly joined forces with his old enemy to stand against the monster he had created.

At the end of the storyline, Reverie, Madame Liberty, Lockstep and Robin Goodfellow took on the mantles of the four seasons, unleashing them throughout the Iron Court and filling the gaps left in their natures. The effect of adding a second court structure broke the unity of the Iron Court, which returned its members motivations to it. The realm fractured into civil war, each faction trying to express their season’s nature through the Iron Court’s themes, and while the Iron Court would persist, it would become an increasingly fractured and internecine ideology as more courts were added to its structure. Lockstep returned to the Soviet Union, mourning the fall of a pure ideology into the infighting that he saw all too often.

Behind The Scenes:

Not a lot to say about this one, it’s mostly just a play on the Iron Curtain combined with fae weirdness. But I like the idea of angry Communist fae who are absolutely missing the point, especially in the late 1970s when you’re not going to get very friendly stories about them. It’s probably the first time that Lockstep works with the heroes instead of against them, and starts to lead into his shift once the Soviet Union falls.

At least Venture Comics doesn’t have a Mecha-Stalin lurking in the wings waiting to take advantage of this kind of thing.

Guessing that ??? is meant to be a die size? I mean, it could be a pair of those novelty porkers from Pass the Pigs but somehow that doesn’t seem likely. I suppose they’d be Capitalist Pigs if they were involved, though.

“Aw, heck, double snouter. I’m Out, folks.”

Every time I think I’ve caught them all. Every time.

I will get that fixed tomorrow.

If it makes you feel any better, I had to edit my dinky post three times to get all the errors out. Really, really need a new keyboard, half the characters on mine are just blank keys from long usage at this point and my touch-typing is not up to snuff.

I like that this was not a plan or plot on Lockstep’s part. He got kidnapped and told to teach and thought that sounded cool and then saw how the alien mindset of the fair folk changes a dream into a nightmare

Was super busy last week but Emmett’s Ridge made me think of Mad Amos by Alan Dean Foster

Wow, that’s a reference I didn’t expect to hear in 2026. Wish Foster had done more of those. Those stories weren’t quite up there with Wellman’s John the Balladeer but still great reads, easily as good as Drake’s Old Nathan in that general “folklore fantasy” niche (or whatever it’s actually called).

Yeah, given the time period the content is probably still pretty down on communism as a concept, but it allows some space for the idea to be potentially good. I suspect this is the first story in which Lockstep actually fights alongside Madame Liberty, and it ends up serving as the first step to his long-term transformation over the course of the 2000s.

DOMIN-ION

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Type: Unique (Dangerous)
Key Appearance: Earthwatch #29, July 1981

Traits:

• Automatic Production d10
• Automatic Defenses d8
• Automatic Surveillance d6

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Welded Weapons: DOMIN-ION quickly attaches a newly-constructed device to what it believes to be an ally. Roll the environment dice and boost a mechanical target with the Mid die.
• DOMIN-8R: DOMIN-ION deploys its most-recently created superweapon: the DOMIN-8R. Create a d10 “Domin-8R” minion. It has +1 to damage saves and reduces all penalties received by 1.

Major Twist

• Scrap Arm: DOMIN-ION swings one of its collector arms into a hero, grabbing them. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Max die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Conveyor Belts: The factory floor comes to life, moving people at the worst moments. Roll the environment dice and Hinder any number of targets on the ground with the Mid dice.
• Production Line: A new batch of Domin-8Rs is prepared. Roll the environment dice. Create a number of d10 Domin-8R minions equal to the Min die.

Major Twist

• Overtime: The factory dedicates its processing servos to accomplishing the villain’s goals. Advance the scene tracker.

RED
Minor Twists

• Desperate Deployment: Seeing the situation getting worse, DOMIN-ION begins disassembling half-finished robots to deploy their weapons to its allies. Roll the environment dice and Boost all villain and environment targets with the Max die.
• A Few Bugs: The production line isn’t finished and it doesn’t matter! Roll the environment dice. Create a number of d6 “Half-Finished Robot” minions equal to the Max die. They have +1 to all actions, but are destroyed if they ever roll a ‘1’.

Major Twist

• Recompile: Damaged parts can be reused. Destroy up to (H) environment minions. For each minion destroyed, step up all mechanical minions once, to a maximum of d10. Roll all of the dice of the minions destroyed. All mechanical Villains Recover that much Health.

In many ways, early Earthwatch served as a bridge between the Bronze and Iron Ages of Venture Comics, blending the social issues and general optimism of the prior age with the growing grittiness and darkness that would soon come to define comics in the mid-to-late 1980s. Earthwatch’s foes would also reflect this growing divide, mixing classical supervillains with political drama and questions about redemption and hope. Sometimes, this meant creating villainous political microcosms that also served as lighthearted japes, such as DOMIN-ION.

Built as part of an alliance between recurring Earthwatch foe Hive-Minder and the growing romantic duo of DOMIN-8 and Dr. Dufferin, DOMIN-ION was initially constructed as a mobile robotics factory able to secretly gather materials from scrapyards, industrial waste sites, and landfills and use Hive-Minder’s advanced technology to transform unwanted junk into devastating war machines. The new factory combined DOMIN-8’s Invictum chassis and designs with Hive-Minder’s ionic technology, and thus Dr. Dufferin cheekily dubbed it the “DOMIN-ION”, and the robots that it was building the “DOMIN-8Rs”, remote-service versions of DOMIN-8 that lacked her aggression and drive. Hive-Minder was deeply annoyed, but since he planned to steal the factory the moment it came into operation he let Dufferin call it whatever he wanted.

Of course, DOMIN-8 and Dufferin also planned to steal the factory the moment it came into operation. They thought Hive-Minder was looking down on them (they were right) and wanted to betray him and leave him in the mud. The instant the factory came online, both factions triggered their overrides, trying to steal control of DOMIN-ION and accidentally alerting Earthwatch to their location in the process.

As the heroes arrived to the facility’s first target, a massive junkyard in the eastern United States, Hive-Minder and DOMIN-8 tried to declare a truce long enough to deal with the interlopers. Unfortunately, each of them planned to use the other as a decoy, letting them wear themselves out against Earthwatch and activating the facility. They wound up leaving their factory largely undefended while Earthwatch rampaged through it, constantly butting heads and trying to trick each other into the line of fire. Caught between two masters, DOMIN-ION ultimately overloaded, self-destructing and leaving both Hive-Minder and DOMIN-8 to gather what they could from the wreckage and flee.

As a moral, it was a little bit on the nose. Either villain could have been happy with an army, but they wanted everything, and so they got nothing. The Steward even remarked that if the pair hadn’t been so focused on betraying each other, Earthwatch might never have even realized what they were up to until they were ready to strike. But as a gimmick, it was highly entertaining, and it led to plenty of good encounters between individual Earthwatch members and robotic foes, with the heroes working together and protecting each other in the exact ways that their enemies wouldn’t.

Of course, a mobile robotics facility was too good an idea to pass up. DOMIN-8 and Dr. Dufferin were ultimately able to reproduce DOMIN-ION several times, using the technology they’d stolen from Hive-Minder, and for his part Hive-Minder set up his own ‘Dominion Station’ on three occasions to fight the Celestial Travellers. None of the later factories survived for long; they were always discovered and destroyed. But they would become a core part of their creators’ stories.

Behind The Scenes:

I’ve been making a lot of factories lately, I should probably shift things up. But I do like the idea of Earthwatch, being formed to learn how to be heroes, getting front row seats to what happens when villains don’t work well together, and I like a factory just trying its best to make cool deadly robots.

Between this and SUB-MSF, I think it’s safe to say that Dr. Dufferin loves automated robot factories and also stupid puns.

Wait, so is that pronounced domin eye-on or dominyun? Or does Hive-Minder use the former and D&D use the latter? Or, well, I suppose it’s a comic, so it’s likely left unanswered.

I think the answer is “whatever is funnier for the writer at the time”. It usually gets pronounced 'Dominyun", but sometimes people put the stress on the tech and call it “Dominn-eye-on”.

Not to be confused with Dough Minions, which are fearsome confectionary constructs produced by Le Patissier Malefique. Entirely different thing.

Ah, yes, that one. Hard to find Oglaf strips that you can safely share with others.

Non-zero chance that I’ve had a GM in a play-by-post OSE game crib from that comic, although in his case it led to an evil holiday-themed faerie working behind the scenes through the local undertaker. Extremely difficult to avoid using meta-knowledge there, it’s nowhere near as obscure a comic as he seemed to think and that was a particularly memorable daily strip.

Probably a better choice than the Gingerdead Man. Not Gary Busey’s best work.

Van Horne Industries

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Type: Standard Location
Key Appearance: World of Wonders #3, September 1982

Traits:

• Concealed Spells d10
• Selfish Workers d8
• Quiet Support d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• A Moment Of Courage: An employee gets ready to throw a cup at a villain’s head. Roll the environment dice and Defend with the Mid die. Apply the Defend against the next attack made against a hero.
• A Moment of Panic: An employee has a meltdown, racing for safety in the worst ways! Create the following challenge: Save the employee. If the challenge is not resolved by the next environment turn, roll the environment dice and Hinder one hero with the Max die as the employee throws themselves into the way.

Major Twist

• Vicious Glyphs: Wards hidden in the walls by the previous owners trigger. Roll the environment dice and Attack one magic-using target with the Max die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Siphon Glyphs: The arcane conditions required to exchange life force trigger. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Mid die. A nearby target gains a bonus equal to the penalty created.
• Up In Flames: A room catches fire, leaving a group of employees in danger! Create the following challenge: Put the fires out.

Major Twist

• Coffee Break: Fortune glyphs hidden in the boardroom activate, dispensing the energy that helps the staff work long hours without breaks. Roll the environment dice. All targets in the building Recover equal to the Mid die, and all minions and lieutenants that are below their maximum status die increase it by one step.

RED
Minor Twists

• Emergency Glyph: A power glyph triggers, empowering a random person. Roll the environment dice and Boost one target with the Max+Min dice.
• Security Daemon: One of the Van Horne contracts triggers. Create a d10 “Security Daemon” lieutenant which Attacks any hero or villain who seems to be opposed to the pursuit of profit.

Major Twist

• Panic: The staff are stampeding for the exists. Create the following challenge:
• Evacuate the building. Until the challenge is resolved, any time a target rolls a ‘1’ they also Hinder themselves with the result.

World of Wonders launched into a complicated comics landscape, but it quickly carved out a place for itself as a breath of fresh air in the complicated landscape of Venture Comics. The Penitent had made a name for herself after her limited series the year before, and Lewis Maron was tasked with finding a set of magical heroes to join her and take on the role of globe-trotting heroes. He considered his recently-developed Hidden Corners characters, but was overruled, and fell back on some more well-regarded characters who hadn’t had as much ink spilled about their exploits recently – Wonderer, Dawn Rider, and Prometheus. The four heroes never had a proper team name, but they would end up helping to develop much of the magical setting of Venture Comics that would cover the next few decades.

One of the deliberately complicating factors of the comic was Susannah’s relationship to her family business. Van Horne Industries had been built on black magic and sacrifice, staffed with people chosen for their loyalty, greed, and ruthless dedication to profit, and safeguarded with all of the dark magic at Scion’s disposal. When she first inherited the company, the Penitent considered simply dissolving the lot of it and going it alone, but she quickly became convinced that doing so would only result in a half-dozen dangerous businesses sprouting up in its wake. Instead, she began the arduous task of rebuilding, while simultaneously dealing with her responsibilities as a champion of the magical world. She hoped that she could take advantage of her employees’ loyalty to redirect their attitudes towards more beneficial pursuits.

Within three issues, the first disaster arose. A vice-president of the company, angry about a recent directive to move away from selling dangerous industrial chemicals and redeveloping the company’s real estate arm to spend a portion of its profits rebuilding poorer neighborhoods, reached out to hire an assassin to take out what he believed to be a naïve and spoiled young woman with minimal understanding of her family’s power. He knew that Susannah had some magic, so he hired Avarice, and set things up to make it look like an attack on the building’s magic during a major board meeting that would ‘coincidentally’ end Susannah’s life.

Avarice arrived to discover that Van Horne Industries had far more magic than he’d expected. Delighted and empowered by the building’s hidden glyphs, he began a rampage that threatened to bring the entire headquarters down and kill dozens of people. Susannah ‘vanished’ in the confusion, using a collapsed roof to costume up as the Penitent, and sent out a call to the Wonderer to bring their allies to help.

As the battle raged, the increasingly-worried vice-president tried to reign Avarice in, only to discover that reigning Avarice in was essentially impossible. As he struggled to escape, a daemon summoned by the damage identified him as a Traitor To The Van Hornes and cut him down before the Penitent could save him.

Shocked by the incident, the Penitent nonetheless doubled down on her plans to reform her family’s business, firing several executives, hiring new employees from underprivileged communities, and even sending the minions of former enemies to get jobs in a company that might understand their unique needs. Many of the changes that she made were undone by the Scion of Silence during that event, leading her to have to repeat the situation throughout the 1990s, but over time she was able to shape Van Horne Industries from a cruel and vicious place to a moderately decent business empire with good benefits and open doors for victims of magical disasters.

As for Avarice, he ended up banished to the demonic realm that the Van Hornes had drawn their security from alongside the demons that the building summoned, caught in the backlash of the Penitent and Wonderer’s work as he drained demonic essence to survive. This time, no one expected him to be gone for long – even the Penitent agreed that the villain would likely find his way back to Earth soon enough. Avarice had, however, learned that there was a business out there with plenty of magic for him to snack on. Drawing on his own skills and connections, he spent much of the rest of World of Wonders finding ways to acquire, manipulate, or sabotage smaller subsidiaries of Van Horne Industries, using his unique abilities to drain their magical defenses and render businesses that had grown complacent from their good fortune vulnerable to hostile takeover. His ultimate goal was to take over the business, but the storyline was cut short by the Sovereign of Secrets event and when he resurfaced in the Iron Age, it was with only a few of his business interests intact.

Behind The Scenes:

One of my favorite retcons when I was working through my restructuring was giving Penitent the Principle of Business and making her the resident Rich Superhero. It fits her moral complexity and desire to do good with the profits of bad deeds, and it means that her company is as much an antagonist as it is a resource.

This helped write up one of the ways that could go, and since it needed to be a bit longer for pagecount it also gave a new story beat for Avarice, who previously only existed to appear in the Silver Age, never get mentioned again until he took out the entire Champions of Truth in a single storyline and kicked off a terrible revamp. Now we know what he’s up to in the eighties - being an evil businessman who will make deals with you and then steal your stuff. He’s not a good mercenary! Do not hire him!

Bad time to be wearing your Eat the Rich! and Occupy Wall Street merch, but there’s also an awful lot of villains out there with weird motivations that don’t make any business sense whatsoever. They probably get a demon beating just on general principles. That nutter who built a Hirsutinator just to fight Captain Squamous and never even considered patenting it as a hair loss cure is just asking for the offended spirits of Evil Capitalism to intervene.

Marvel’s Sauron get a pass because as much as you might think a cancer cure might be worth, the meme licensing money is orders of magnitude greater.

I posted it so quick because I have a folder of work safe Oglaf in my pictures folder.
and some not safe art and a few storylines in individual folders.

Bit odd how this twist just puts up a challenge that… does nothing? I mean, it doesn’t have a timer, doesn’t have a bad effect while it’s out, and doesn’t give you anything when you complete it. So, there’s not much exigency to it. Of course, good roleplayers would want to but out the fire quickly, but it’s a bit odd that there’s no mechanical repercussions to, say, dealing with literally everything else in the scene and then leaving this challenge for last.

I feel like that’s just a recipe for those embittered execs to become villains / start their own evil rival companies, which Penitent explicitly wanted to avoid…

Whaaat? You mean the guy named Avarice cares more about his own profit that staying loyal to an employer??? : O

The default for challenges without timers or other rules (eg “when the scene reaches the next GYRO zone, then X happens”) is that if they haven’t been solved when the scene tracker runs out, negative consequences occur. In this case that’s probably multiple employees injured or killed, depending on how dark a tone the GM wants. As a Yellow twist it’s not particularly urgent, but it’s still at least two hero actions needed by end of scene, and as a Minor it could recur multiple times, with the fire spreading or another one breaking out elsewhere. That could really get out of hand if the heroes were counting on just leaving the challenge for later on.

Yep, that. If the challenge isn’t creating a specific penalty for the scene, it’s still creating a narrative problem that ends badly if it isn’t resolved.

I’ve been leaning a bit more heavily on immediate penalties, and I deliberately want to take a half-step back from that and include more penalties that are just “it’s bad, you can see why it’s bad”, especially for minor twists.

Some-day…some-day.

I certainly did not find it to be so. Not that I mind seeing Oglaf quotes anywhere, and certainly not such unexpected ones, but I don’t consider that one of the best even of the SFW subset.

Head In The Clouds

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Type: Standard Event
Key Appearance: Champions of Truth #179, August 1985

Traits:

• Loose Visions d12
• Shattered Ley Lines d10
• Portal Fragments d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Worst Outcomes: A barrage of potential fates fills everyone with dread. Roll the environment dice and Attack every sentient target with the Min die.
• False Rivals: Flickers of lives that onlookers never had emerge to fight. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d6 “Doppelganger” minions equal to the Min die. Anyone attacking their own doppelganger must Hinder themselves with their Min die.

Major Twist

• A True Change: As the battle continues, a flickering ley lines draws a potential into actuality. Choose two previously-established facts about the location to remove, and replace them with two new facts.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• A True Prophecy: A fragment of the Head Master’s power rests in someone else. Roll the environment dice and Boost one target with the Mid die. That bonus is persistent and exclusive.
• A False Prophecy: A false certainty of future events settles into the minds of a group of people. Create the following challenge: Demonstrate that the prophecy is false. Until the challenge is resolved, all affected individuals step down their Quality dice by one step.

Major Twist

• Actual Demons: As the world erodes, monsters break free. Roll the environment dice and create a number of d10 “Rampaging Demon” minions equal to the Mid die. They add the largest penalty on their target to Attacks against them.

RED
Minor Twists

• Shared Fate: Two characters are locked into a prophecy of victory and defeat. Roll the environment dice and Boost one target with the Max die. Attack the other target with the Min die.
• Fate Is Fortune: Luck and prophecy begin to interweave. Until the start of the next environment turn, whenever a character takes an action, they Boost themselves with their lowest even die result and Hinder themselves with their lowest odd die result.

Major Twist

• Mental Calamity: A psychic eruption occurs, centered on a single target. Hinder that target with the Max die. Attack any other nearby targets with the Max die.

The effects of the Sovereign of Secrets and their meddling in the timelines of the world weren’t limited to the heroes of Venture Comics. Through the mid-1980s, writers took advantage of the adjustments to revise, retcon, or otherwise alter the backstories and histories of several of Venture Comics’ villains. Mr. Ferris became a younger man, back in control of his Ferristown empire. White Mantis became two generations of supervillain, both drawing on the history of the original. Poison Pen’s stint as a small-time mercenary vanished along with much of her Silver Age history, moving her back into the shadows as a villain known to only a handful of heroes.

Not all of these changes were so direct, however. Because the situation with the Sovereign was a soft reset with an in-universe reason to exist, some writers chose to play with the situation, exploring how the adjusted world might affect characters more directly. Jordan Marks, taking over Champions of Truth, decided to have some fun by doing this with the Head Master.

In the “Head in the Clouds” two-parter in mid-1985, Marks revealed that Head Master’s predictive abilities were in absolute chaos. His powers were based on subconsciously gathering information from the past and present to predict likely outcomes with near-perfect accuracy, but the past was no longer a reliable source of information. A mess of stacked timelines had left the villain with crippling migraines and an inability to track what was happening or would happen, constantly reacting to situations that weren’t happening or preparing for eventualities that the Sovereign’s interference had wiped clean from existence. In a desperate attempt to repair his capabilities, Head Master reached out to a Dread Power. He opened a portal to the Empress of Ash, seeking to burn away the false timelines in his head and restore his power.

It didn’t take a master foreteller to know what would happen next. The Empress tried to seize control of the ritual, hoping to transform the villain into her latest minion for her assault on Earth. With limited understanding of magic and dimensional powers, Head Master found himself locked in a mental battle with a fundamental force of devastation as prophecy and fate began to burn around him. The new Champions of Truth arrived, but were quickly assaulted by both the forces of the Empress and the minions of Head Master trying to keep the heroes from their boss.

The resulting battle was fierce. Wonderer and Reverie repaired the damaged ley lines, Greenheart and Skybreaker took the battle to the streets and cleared away both the demons and gangsters that opposed them, and the Penitent sought out Head Master directly, severing the connection between him and his would-be rescuer and delivering a very impassioned speech about the absolutely insane danger that he’d put himself and everyone else in.

At which point the Head Master smirked, told the Penitent that actually, everything had gone according to plan, and triggered his contingency plan, escaping into a secret passage warded against magical intrusion and leaving the Champions to clean up his mess. He’d always known that they would respond to a sufficiently chaotic situation, and had deliberately planned for them to save him from a situation that he knew he couldn’t handle alone. The battle had cleared his powers, aligning him to the new timelines, and he was ready to become a menace once again.

“Head in the Clouds” served to re-establish the threat of the Head Master without undermining the Champions, while also helping to play with the complex situation of the post-Sovereign world and touching on the potential return of the other Dread Powers. It was a popular story, and would serve as a baseline for the increasingly complicated threats that the magical Champions of Truth would have to face.

Behind The Scenes:

A bit of behind-the-curtain into how some of these environments get made: first I line up the years and how many entries I’ve got, then I look at what comic titles are available in what years, then I see which ones line up with years in which I don’t know what’s going on in that comic, and finally I look for a villain I haven’t talked about recently and slot them in.

For 1985, I had a lot of choices, but most of them were titles where I’d already talked about what their first years looked like while creating the new heroes of the setting, and others were ones I was already committed to doing some extreme 90s for. Kicking off with Champions of Truth felt right, and I liked the idea that the first year of the new Champions mostly used their greatest hits - there are definitely also Doctor Freak and Congress of Deceit stories in there (even if the Congress no longer actually aligns one to one with the Champions). But an event that was “Head Master’s prophetic powers are all fucked up because time is all fucked up” was too good to pass up on.

Like A Hurricane

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Type: Dangerous Event
Key Appearance: Covert Tactics (Vol. 3) #26, January 1987

Traits:

• Roaring Wind d10
• Flashing Lightning d8
• Raining Bullets d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Focused Gusts: It’s as though the wind hates you personally. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one hero with the Mid die.
• The Red Wind: A group of terrorists emerges to attack! Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Red Wind” minions equal to the Min die. They have +1 to Hinder.

Major Twist

• Lightning Strike: The skies open up and the thunder rolls. Roll the environment dice and Attack a group of targets who are near each other with the Mid die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Shielding Winds: The hurricane seems to be supporting the villains! Roll the environment dice and Boost a villain target with the Max die.
• The Cold Wind: One of Vortex’s true lieutenants emerges to fight. Create a d8 “Cold Wind” villain lieutenant.

Major Twist

• Wind Generator: One of the wind generators kicks into high gear, offering a chance to track it down. Roll the environment dice. Hinder all heroes with the Mid die, then create the following challenge: Safely disable the generator. When the challenge is resolved, step down the environment’s Roaring Winds die one step.

RED
Minor Twists

• Blast of Lightning: The hurricane’s power is getting more focused. Roll the environment dice and Attack one hero with the Max+Min dice.
• Wall of Wind: The generators are increasingly protected as the storm worsens. Roll the environment dice and Hinder all heroes with the Max die.

Major Twist

• Incoming Missile Strike: AEGIS has identified the generator location and is on its way. This is not a good thing. Advance the scene tracker.

Scenario Notes: This event typically includes a Doomsday Device, and uses the Epic scene tracker.

As the Iron Age dawned, a growing number of comics in the Venture setting focused on heroes getting caught between clearly villainous activity, and a government that was fearful, distrustful, or too quick on the draw. Covert Tactics served as the spearhead for these stories, able to both demonstrate the need for heroes and, through Madame Liberty’s cover identity with AEGIS, offer direct insight into how the government was (mis)handling situations.

This also offered a chance to revamp some classic villains, bringing them in line with the new, grittier comics era. One strong beneficiary of this work was Vortex. Freed of her initial origin as a Chinese communist agent, Vortex was reimagined as still being the result of Chinese government experimentation into creating superhumans, but one who went rogue almost immediately after her powers manifested, becoming a freelance terrorist, bodyguard, and trainer for other terrorist groups. Vortex considered herself the enemy of all hegemonic states, but with America in the ascendancy she considered them her primary threat. She believed that global cooperation was impossible; all nations would ultimately be at odds with each other, and only a world with no superpowers could survive. Any agents of an imperialist power were valid targets, and all citizens of imperialist powers were their agents.

Vortex’s first major foray in the Iron Age was the “Like a Hurricane” storyline. Working with a small terrorist cell that called themselves the Red Wind, and who wished to return the world to its agricultural roots, Vortex connected herself to a dangerously untested hurricane generator, using it to boost her powers to a point where she could wipe an entire city off the map. Her goal was to push AEGIS into launching a large-scale missile strike on the factories in Neulyon’s eastern districts, damaging American industry and fostering distrust of the American government in its people, and pinning the blame on her patsies without anyone learning that she was involved.

AEGIS became aware of the situation when one of their agents was killed by the Red Wind. When AEGIS sent their new Agent Apollo, Rick Wilson, to resolve the situation, Madame Liberty and Covert Tactics mobilized to protect him. They were fighting on a timer, because Vortex’s plan was working – AEGIS had mapped out the damage that the hurricane generator could do, and were preparing a large-scale missile strike to take the heavily-reinforced building down if the generator wasn’t shut down in time. Discovering Vortex’s involvement, Madame Liberty was able to disconnect her from the generator while her team dealt with the Red Wind, shutting down the operation with AEGIS’s jets already in the air.

The incident helped to cement Covert Tactics’ distrust of AEGIS, develop an ideology for Vortex that worked alongside her more common mercenary work without making her particularly sympathetic, and made it clear just how dangerous the new world order was becoming. The popularity of the comic led to the growth of AEGIS as an active threat rather than an obstacle, with readers agreeing that AEGIS’s willingness to kill thousands to ‘protect’ the rest of the city showing that they were one of the villains that needed to be dealt with.

Behind The Scenes:

My Iron Age environments are a little bit tilted towards 90s gonzo, but I wanted at least one setup for the early years of the Iron Age and how that grittiness was being applied, and Covert Tactics seemed like the right place for it. It’s also a good place for Vortex; we know that she’s a big enough deal to get a legacy character treatment in 2001, but I didn’t really know what she was up to in the 80s and 90s. I’d also made a comment about her claiming to fight for equality and raising her daughter that way, which wasn’t fully in line with “mercenary for hire”. So this rounds that storyline out.

This is not the first generated weather event I’ve written up. They’re useful things to have in the back pocket!

That’s a good distinction. The pre-Code era could get away with quite a bit more, but 1967 really would have been an awkward point for a mainstream superhero setting. A coffeehouse or late-night diner might fit the period better while still giving the characters a regular gathering place

No post Monday for Labour Day, so it’s Tuesday/Friday this week. We’re kicking off with:

No post for labor day, but here we go with:

The Aurora Borealis

Aurora Borealis600×400 304 KB

Type: Heroic Location
Key Appearance: Celestial Travels #601, March 1989

Traits:

• Nuclear Core d10
• Esoteric Amenities d8
• Aurora d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Defensive Field: Aurora deploys internal force fields to protect the Travellers! Roll the environment dice and Defend each heroic target with the Min die.
• Activate Internal Sensors: The systems are having trouble tracking intruders. Create a new challenge: Get the sensors working. Until the challenge is resolved, the GM does not need to reveal activity in any location that a hero is not in. When the challenge is resolved, create a +2 “Sensor Lock” bonus that can be used by any hero.

Major Twist

• Gravity Glitch: The ship’s gravity flickers in a hyper-localized area. Roll the environment dice and Hinder one target with the Max die.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Exploding Consoles: A set of consoles explodes as damage ripples through the ship. Roll the environment dice and Attack all targets in one location with the Mid die.
• Blast Doors: Aurora seals all of the problems away where they can’t hurt anybody. Until the start of the next environment turn, anyone wanting to move between locations must succeed at an Overcome.

Major Twist

• Direct Assistance: Aurora directly interfaces with one of the crew. Roll the environment dice and Boost one heroic target with the Max die. This bonus is persistent and exclusive.

RED
Minor Twists

• Arsenal Breach: The intruders breach one of the Aurora Borealis’s armories. Roll the environment dice and Boost multiple villain targets with the Max die.
• Reactor Breach: The Aurora Borealis’s nuclear reactor is going critical – if it isn’t fixed, it may have to be ejected! Create a new challenge: Stabilize the reactor.

Major Twist

• Gravity Breach: The previous brief gravity problems just got a lot more severe. Roll the environment dice and Hinder using the Mid die. This penalty is persistent and exclusive and applies to anyone who can’t operate easily in zero gravity. Also Defend all targets on the ship with the Min die for as long as the penalty exists.

Neutrino’s iconic spaceship, the Aurora Borealis, underwent several revisions over the course of Celestial Travels in response to shifts in the comic’s tone and style. Initially designed to resemble a cylindrical three-prong rocket in the style of pulp spaceships of the time, drawn in a mixture of green and gold to reflect the patterns of its namesake, the rocket was deliberately designed as a tight one-man craft, with a cockpit, small eating area where Neutrino could visit with a guest of the week, and a sleeping area in the back near the engines. During the Dimensional Devastation event the Aurora Borealis was captured and then wrecked stopping the Empress of Ash, part of a plan to open room for a team of heroes to join Neutrino on his travels.

The revamped Aurora Borealis was the one that most comics fans thought of when they thought of Celestial Travels. Flat and sleek, with ‘solar sails’ on the sides and a shimmering cockpit in the back, the ship held enough room for a crew of six, although for most of the 1970s only three people occupied it for any length of time and Wavelength and Doctor Cosmos occupied the same crew cabin to ‘save space’. It also featured an integrated artificial intelligence called “Aurora” – although not technically sentient, Aurora had a rudimentary ability to respond to threats and anticipate the needs of the crew, and most of them often interacted with it like one would a particularly smart pet.

When the Celestial Travelers grew to five members after Peacemonger’s invasion, the first comics issue was dedicated to their ship and the complicated relationship of three people who had been journeying together for some time suddenly needing to open themselves to a new romantic couple joining the team, a pair who were still reeling from the dissolution of their own team and their need to not be on Earth for a while. Half-Life and Ember were grateful to join the Celestial Travelers; Half-Life in particular was glad to be with his old partner Wavelength again, and to help to recover his still-fragmented memories, and Ember was glad to have a chance to prove herself. Half of Celestial Travels #601 was dedicated to the five heroes working around each other, figuring out where they stood, and deciding whether their new arrangement was going to be temporary or ongoing.

The other half was about Subjugator and the Starbooters trying to hijack the ship, having carefully set up a team designed to hit Neutrino, Wavelength, and Reckoner where they were weakest.

The pirates overloaded Aurora, confusing the AI and shorting out the ship’s internal sensors, and then invaded armed with cosmic bafflers and nuclear-absorbing technology. Reckoner was still wrestling with her new powers and was quickly taken down, and Wavelength was caught mid-teleport and knocked out. Half-Life caught the raiders off-guard, but his nuclear powers were similar enough to Neutrino’s to be vulnerable – but Ember’s command of flame was not, and in fact the technology the Starbooters were using proved to be particularly vulnerable to overheating. Despite gravity failures, several failed attempts by Aurora to assist with the situation, and Subjugator’s raw power, the Starbooters were quickly forced back, their ship entering a warp path while damaged and vanishing into the depths of space.

The Celestial Travelers were quickly established after that. While they might bicker and need to figure out their space, they’d been through a confusing, complicated mess and come out the other side, and their further adventures across the Iron Age would reinforce their connections and gradually help them become a family.

Behind The Scenes:

Another one I’ve been planning for a while, to the point that I barely used any randomizers this time. The Celestial Travelers are a group that really need to have some more detail filled in, and a chance to have the “inside of the ship” environment seemed too good to pass up!

“Gah! My spleen is suddenly experiencing 5 gees! How did that happen?”

I blame Doctor Demiurge. IYKYK.

“Dammit, who stored all these pyrotechnics in there?”

I blame Doctor Demiurge.

“We have multiple armories?”

I blame Doctor Demiurge. And yet, he’s still storing overflow explosives in our control panels.

Wait, does Doctor Demiurge even exist on this universe? Eh, he’s probably omniversal.

Pretty hero-friendly environment overall, but of course all their stuff is on board so there’s some added stakes if they wind up having to eject their reactor or get taken over by space pirates or something.

Very minor proofing note: The Red Reactor Breach twist didn’t get bolded properly.

When did Hero Forge start including options for building spacecaft? Are their seplljammers too? I may have to take another look at the site.

Do they do mecha by any chance? The first place that starts offering a way to do suitable custom mechs is going to see a bajillion orders from the Lancer community, but getting the design style right would be tricky.

HeroForge doesn’t have options for building spacecraft, I’m just testing out how ridiculous I can get with kitbashing. The answer is pretty ridiculous if you’re willing to take the time.

This one uses a stretched out and squished cylinder as the base, with a jetpack layered into it to create the side wings and a different jetpack stretched out in the back for engines, and then a pair of rayguns pressed in for weapons, a version of the orb that Doctor Cosmos holds for the cockpit, and a metal backpack on the front giving it a front bulk feel.

(Doctor Demiurge doesn’t exist in Venture; I would want CKirby’s permission first and they haven’t been around in over a year. Charlie Foxtrot and the clone soldier species could show up as a Diamond Age thing, I can definitely see them appearing there as one of the other Celestial Traveler teams that shows up periodically, and I’d be happy for Phade to be on that team too with your permission.)

Looks like whoever built the ship went to the Starfleet School of Engineering.

It certainly worked out well. Could they theoretically print that out for you? Or is there some kind of vetting process where some extreme custom jobs fail to pass the “can exist as physical object” and get rejected for that service?

You’re welcome to use Phade if you like, although note that (unlike Wavelength) she tends to teleport while invisible (or at least translucent) and is therefore a little harder to catch mid-jump. No sense in having all those d10s in Stealth, Invisibility, Teleportation, and Principle of Stealth to go with them if you’re just going to let yourself get captured - or even noticed when you don’t feel like it.

My understanding is that HeroForge kitbashing runs on a “at your own risk” model. If you request it, they’ll run the print, and if it doesn’t print successfully because of something you kitbashed they’ll send you the unsuccessful print. I don’t think they have a particular verification system, you just get a junk piece (there’s a particular warning about attaching large items to small hands.)

Interesting. Even a badly flawed attempt at a print could be useful for physical kitbashing, but I suppose it wouldn’t be a very economical way to fuel that mill.

Why am I not surprised they get enough attempts at adding comically-oversized weapons to figs that it merits a specific warning? Buster swords, hammers with heads big enough to be anvils instead, and ridiculously oversized 90s Image firearms must be irresistible to many gamers.

Welp.

As per Christopher’s announcement, this will be my final post over here on the GTG forums. It has been a great time, and I hope that I’ve brought a bit of joy.

If you’d like to continue following the progress of Venture Comics, you can find the companion thread over here on RPG.net. Those of you who aren’t already chatting over there (waving to Rich) might think of making an account and following along.

Otherwise, I’ll still be assembling these into full PDF volumes over on my Itch page, which is linked at the top of this thread, and I’ll still be linking them on the fan Realm of Discord.

It’s been a blast. Thanks for following along. The only thing left to do is… crash this thread into the sea!!!

Neo-Avalon

Neo-Avalon600×400 217 KB

Type: Unique
Key Appearance: Knightgrave Annual #3, July 1990

Traits:

• Blood-Drive Engine d10
• Gas-Line Propellers d8
• Deadly Gusts d8

GREEN
Minor Twists

• Fusion Burst: Neo-Avalon rains fire down on the heroes. Roll the environment dice and Attack any hero who hasn’t made it onboard with the Min die.
• Catalyst Knights: Roll the environment dice and create a number of d8 “Bloodsworn Knight” minions equal to the Min die. When one is defeated, roll its status die and Boost another minion with the result.

Major Twist

• Strain Appears: Neo-Avalon is less invincible than it appears. Now and at the start of each turn, roll a and create the following challenge:
  • 1-3: Steal blood from the Blood-Drive Engine to reduce the Blood-Drive Engine die by one step.
  • 4-6: Shatter the gas lines across the ship to reduce the Gas-Line Propellers die by one step.

YELLOW
Minor Twists

• Gas Rupture: A gas line bursts over someone. Roll the environment dice and Attack a target with the Mid die. Hinder them with the Min die.
• Hostages! X-Calibre’s men return with civilian hostages. Create the following challenge: Save the hostages before they’re killed! If the scene tracker reaches Red before the challenge is solved, kill the hostages and increase the Blood-Drive Engine die by one step.

Major Twist

• Galahad: X-Calibre’s merciless second-in-command is on the scene. Create a d8 “Galahad” lieutenant. When he Boosts, he may target up to three minions. He may immediately take a Boost action.

RED
Minor Twists

• Blood Magic: The engine is roaring out of control. Roll the environment dice and Attack a target with the Mid die. Boost the same target with the Min die. The bonus is persistent and exclusive.
• Rampaging Knights : The Bloodsworn are growing stronger. Create (H) d10 “Bloodsworn Marauder” minions. When one of them dies, step up the others’ status dice once.

Major Twist

• Ramming Speed: It may be too late. Remove all “Strain Appears” challenges currently in play. Roll a for each challenge removed and Attack all targets aboard Neo-Avalon with the total result.

Scenario Note: If any environment die drops below d4, Neo-Avalon crashes into the English Channel at the start of the next environment turn, saving the city and posing a devastating threat to anyone still on board.

By the early 1990s, Venture was using its ‘Annual’ issues primarily for big summer and winter crossover events. Most of these events featured three or four annual issues, along with one or two standard issues or one-shots linked to the main event taking place. In the summer of 1990, the decision was made for the main annual crossover to be between Knightgrave and the Champions of Truth. Greenheart was in Japan on her ill-considered ‘ninja’ arc, although she was returning to the Champions periodically for their own battles, and it seemed like a good time for a few of the Champions to come to England for a devastating battle against a foe that had lost some of his shine over the past few years.

X-Caliber had become a bit of a joke in the late 1980s; after a strong start in the first two years of Knightgrave, he’d faded into the background as Knightgrave dealt with the Ravenmaster, Sleight, and the six demon princes seeking Merlin’s head. His most recent appearance, the year before, had featured an attempt to join forces with the Dread Dynasty that ended with him mocked and spurned by the power-supremacist aristocrats. In the hopes of revitalizing the villain and moving him back into position as Knightgrave’s greatest enemy, the Venture editorial room collaborated on a new attempt to bring ruin to England.

The story kicked off in Knightgrave Annual #3, with Baron Carmichael discovering the grave of Mordred Pendragon. His men were able to unearth remnants of Mordred’s endless battles during his centuries of death, coalescing into blood crystals that they were able to use to exsanguinate captive civilians. The resulting crystals held phenomenal power, and X-Caliber was able to use them to construct his ultimate flying fortress, Neo-Avalon! Powered by ancient blood magic mixed with modern technology, the fortress was able to project an energy shield that guarded it from missiles and assault. With his forces arrayed behind him, X-Caliber flew Neo-Avalon into the heart of London, threatening to rain death upon the city unless the House of Windsor abdicated and declared him the rightful King of England. His knights began kidnapping government officials and civil servants, holding them as hostages that could be used to bolster the blood crystals powering his ship and his followers.

Knightgrave tried to handle Neo-Avalon himself, but the fortress’s magic was turned on him, weakening his own blood magic and nearly ending his immortal life. X-Caliber stabbed him through the heart and threw him from the platform to drown in the Thames. At the last moment, Knightgrave was rescued by Wonderer, Penitent, and Skybreaker, who had arrived in the nick of time to deal with what was rapidly becoming an international incident.

Over the course of Skybreaker Annual #18 and Champions of Truth Annual #12, the four heroes set themselves against Neo-Avalon, using a mixture of force, guile, and persuasion to find and turn the members of Carmichael’s household who were horrified at the murders taking place against him, weaken the blood-driven engine, and ultimately direct the entire fortress into the English Channel. The final battle was fierce, with Knightgrave returning the blade Carmichael had driven into him back into X-Caliber’s chest. The fortress sank, and the synthesized blood crystals were lost, preventing another from being created.

Carmichael survived, of course. He successfully argued in court that he had been corrupted by exposure to an undead knight, and that Mordred Pendragon had been the one truly responsible for Neo-Avalon. Most people didn’t believe him, but just enough did to keep Knightgrave in an uncomfortable position with the law and to keep X-Caliber out of jail. He would go on to be a persistent thorn in Knightgrave’s side, wielding power and the law against him.

Behind The Scenes:

Now we’re getting extreme! Stolen blood magic, draining people of their blood to power a giant flying fortress, somehow blaming the heroes for it at the end and getting off scot-free. That’s the nineties, baby! Weirdly appropriate for a final post over here.

In all seriousness, I do love this story as a summer annual. It makes no sense. It’s absolutely silly. It’s great.

One last thumbs up for you, I guess. Made my relevant comments over on the mirror.

Unlike you, my big thread’s not mirrored anywhere (I made a partial effort at rpg.net for a while, but it’s far out of date) so I guess I’d better make sure it’s on the Wayback Machine if I want access to all the comments and links there - or from other threads. What a pain.

Welp, looks like it’s time for me to go and make an account over on rpg.net.

You can read without logging in there, but not respond to posts.

That said, I was rather enjoying your fanfic over here, so having it migrate there would be a Good Thing.

Heck, if enough of us shift over we could get a PbP supers game going composed of forum refugees. Maybe use Champions or Villains & Vigilantes?

Yeah, I know, but I wouldn’t want to read along and be unable to comment.

Oh? Huh, I didn’t know that that sort of thing was something they that did over there. If that is the case, maybe I will share it over there…

You know, I don’t normally consider PbP things given time committments, but I might make an exception for something like that…

When you aren’t logged in you can’t even see some of the subforums exist, but it isn’t a big thing over there. There’s no dedicated one for fanfic that I know of, but I’ve seen it crop up various places over the years and it doesn’t appear to be discouraged. My advice would be to get registered, then ask the mods (either on the “Starting Gate” intro board up top, or way down in Trouble Tickets) where they’d like that sort of thing posted.