Episode 249 of the Letters Page: Creative Process: Rambler Foes

A rambling man with some rambling foes

This episode is going to be just a great dump of stuff we never knew before and I am here for it!

So the big one is Grimm, right?

Okay, so Rambler deck confirmed, right?

Time for some Gallo’s humor!

This guy is me if I got cursed by a magical artifact. XD

“He’ll never need, just want.” Lines that go hard!

I wonder if they could call him Tantalus…

Hmm, lots of rambling in this episode, thinking emoji.

After this Grimm letter, I am now extremely desirous of a Grimm vs. Guise story.

But the Void’s made of jelly, not bread! D:

Honestly, I think the powerset is what makes Rambler so cool. Being able to weaponize debts, it’s just so esoteric. Like the various portrayals of faerie magic that involve hospitality or etiquette. That’s just rad!

The fakeout couldn’t work this time. We all know that Rambler gets his electricity for free - he made a deal for power, and he’s not planning to pay the price!

I will never not read Rambler’s hero name and immediately start hearing Steve Martin singing “Ramblin’ Man” in my head. When his deck hits my table I will probably start doing this out loud, and my wife will get really annoyed with me. But that’s a me problem…

It was interesting to hear Christopher broach the topic of how they’ve created specifically problematic elements of Sentinel Comics, and do recognize that fact. I suppose since the meta-character they are creating is the comic publisher itself, they are adding character flaws and realism to it. The downside, of course, is that they then create physical stuff based on those problematic flaws that will be published in the 2020s…but he didn’t talk about that part of it.

The idea that Rambler’s nemesis is a trickster fae that poses as various sneaky/tricky gods is a fun thing. I’m imagining Puck from Gargoyles, but more malicious. Like I’ve said in the various speculation threads, if Rambler gets a deck, I think his big thing would be moving around the various untyped cards (roles, bonds, and other dirty villain tricks), or maybe just affecting any card that isn’t native to a given play area…

Yeah. I’m more than a little disappointed that “Black Fist” made it into the physical game. Sure, Fixer doesn’t have that many different versions, and that’s fine, but I would rather have had ANY other variant of ANY other character instead…

My expectation for a totally hypothetical Rambler deck is the ability to pull a target from the environment or villain deck to jump in front of damage to Rambler, but at a potential of leaving that target in play. Also make a deal with other heroes where they give Rambler control of an Ongoing or Item, and then get to Summon the exact card they want.

…because lots of people in the fandom thought Black Fist was cool and actively asked for a variant based on it.

Yeah, and I was one of them, but I changed my mind after @OddballPaladin pointed it out. It’s one thing to look back at the history of something that did actually exist in the 70s and argue that it was a different time with different social mores (even if the people back then really should have known better); but it’s another thing to create something now that fits those patterns. I think it also helped change my mind that they’ve recently created stuff I have personal issues with (Aeternus, which builds on assuming-Christianity-as-default tropes), which helped me resonate more with the point about Black Fist even though I’m not personally impacted by that one. I didn’t even know about the Robert Johnson and Papa Legba folklore until C&A discussed it on the Letters Page, and I learned about the issues with those characters from others on the forum, too.

C&A did a great job for a long time building a comics multiverse that avoided many pitfalls our real world media fell into. They’ve also done some course- correcting when necessary, and I commend them for that because that’s where the hard work lies. I hope they continue in that vein. Ultimately they are the arbiters of what makes it into Sentinel Comics and they are the ones who would take heat for any issues, regardless of what fandom opinions are.

I mean… Haka.

So, how does Demiurge have clothes if he repels everything around him? I’ve got 2 ideas.

1. He wears the robes he was cursed in, which never change, but they stay immaculately clean due to the curse repelling all dirt and filth.
2. He’s actually naked, and they keep things PG-13 through camera angles and covering stuff with his overly long beard and hair.

I vote for 2, but also that every room he enters has a freshly cleaned set of clothes.

He also can’t be clean, but not overly dirty. On the verge of being cleaned.

It’s definitely a concept you shouldn’t think too much about…

Aeternus is just Dante’s Inferno. It’s theme park Christianity, as is the Host, not actual serious Christianity. There doesn’t seem to be a single actual serious overt Christian depiction in Sentinels thus far, only a few very indirect examples like Legacy and Archie.

Edit: Felt I should clarify that I wouldn’t view stuff like that as offensive because it’s little else but cosplay Christianity, and if anything arguably it’s Christian fans who should be mildly annoyed if it wasn’t for the fact that such cosplay Christianity is so common in media it’s just not worth the bother anymore.

Sentinels doesn’t even have an equivalent of someone like Nightcrawler or Daredevil on this front.

I’d go with Option 1, personally; the robes he was wearing when he was cursed were magically included in the curse and never wear down or get dirty, but also it’s really annoying to always be stuck in the same clothes and he really wants to update his wardrobe…

Completely agree on this, Trajector. Thank you for articulating it so well.

I mean… Dante’s Inferno was biblical fan fiction that the author used to make pointed political commentary. My only negative feelings with Aeternus are because it was a little too much like that, so I felt they could have done more/different. But, like Pathfinder strongly linking their demons to the “seven deadly sins” theme, at least it’s done well. Besides, I look at it as the identities and various major figures could a way of Aeternus invasions, where the various personalities take on the identities of mythical figures of their targets. Bit like the goa’uld from Stargate.

Also, I was picturing his clothes still being somewhat included in the curse’s effects, such that his robes are repelled outwards and are thus always billowing and fluttering around him.

I think there is a lot more nuance to C&A creating and releasing things now than if they had fully directly replicated problematic things from the past.

Black Fist, for example, is a lot less problematic when removed from his stories, in my opinion. Without the actual comic books, he is a cool design that adds interesting backstory to Mister Fixer, and makes the world that publishes Sentinels comics feel more realistic.

Edit: Although it is mostly about the film side of things, I found this article about “Blaxploitation” that I found very informative.

But nobody in modern medias treats it that way. It’s just used as cool theming.

Basically, I’d understand if you felt bothered by the Christianity depictions in Sentinels because you think they could be done more respectfully to Christianity as I’d agree, but your attitude is “I dislike Sentinels’ Christian-as-default attitude” giving me the sense you feel Christianity is given special favored treatment, so I was trying to say Christianity is Sentinels is really just superficial trappings utterly stripped of any actual religiosity or serious treatment of it as a belief system.

(Which honestly is why I have bounced off most of the criticisms along this theme as they seem to miss relevant context, and the areas where sociological criticism of Sentinels feels valid to me even with context invariably are ones where C&A end up agreeing and changeing things anyway so I’m content.)

I think my statement came across too strong. I get the use of the “Christianity as trappings” view, because it also fits a lot of the comic history, especially if we started to get into the Vertigo stuff (John Constantine, anyone?). I guess to me I liked what they did with the Host and Aeternus and other places, but was mildly disappointed with some of the characters they started putting into the latter realm.

They said that Demiurge’s robes are constantly being pushed away from him, so my thought is that whatever normal clothes he was wearing when he got cursed were torn to shreds immediately, and then he has to just sort of toss new robes over his head every once in a while. He floats, so they probably don’t get too dirty.

Can he get sweat on them? Does he literally sweat bullets, that get expelled from his body at high speed as soon as they leave his pores? And what happens when he uses the bathroom? Presumably he doesn’t have to anymore, since he doesn’t eat or drink, but his bowels and bladder would have had something in them when the curse struck. If he falls in water, does he displace all the water around him and go splat on the bottom? Heck, I just wonder how he locomotes at all.

Demiurge is a magnetic monopole! Someone alert the Nobel Committee! That is, assuming this discovery hasn’t already been made by Dr. Meredith Stinson or some other scientist in Sentinel Comics.

It was me who said that, not @OddballPaladin, so I should take any heat about that comment!

When they created Aeternus in the underworlds creative process episode, it felt pretty disconnected from everything. But the Backerkit reveals showed it to be very much a thin re-skin over Dante’s Inferno, the “theme park” version, as you put it so well above, and Christopher made the stretch to say that a realm of torment is a universal cultural concept, which…er, no. And that’s the assumption of Christianity as default that I’m talking about. I suppose the most uncharitable interpretation would be that Sentinel Comics is planting a flag to say, hey, that belief system over there is the correct one. The most charitable would probably be that these are all mythologies and Aeternus could have inspired the mythology of Christianity just as the Ennead could have inspired the mythology of ancient Egyptian religion. I find myself somewhere in the middle: I don’t think Sentinel Comics is picking winners, but I do think that Aeternus-involved stories are going to assume that readers buy in to stakes that only make sense through an (American pop-culture) Christian lens. For example, by using a “Soul” keyword in a deck to build narrative tension. It’s not about accurate portrayals or favored treatment of characters, but the assumptions made about readers’ backgrounds and the narrative beats or stakes that they know and/or accept as a given. And this particular assumption is a very common thing in American media, BTW. I’m just disappointed to see it here, too.

Anywho…I, too, immediately wondered what happens to Demiurge’s clothes! Here’s a fun thing: I’ve been on a zero-g aircraft flight, and one of the weird things about micro-g is that it feels like nothing, because your clothes immediately float off your body anywhere they would have been contacting you. It feels very strange. But also, they don’t have to move that much to lose contact with you. How Demiurge breathes, though…

And thanks, @Rabit, I appreciate it!

This just in: People write what they know, readers act surprised by this universal concept.

If anything, Sentinels is extremely unusual that Christopher’s part Venezuelan origins also give various aspects of Sentinels a Latin America flavor that just doesn’t exist in most real world superhero comics.

I’m also not really sure what you’re asking for here. That C&A replace their pop culture Cheez Whiz theme park of Christian religion with pop culture Cheez Whiz theme park of another religion? Would that really be an improvement?

Look, one of the things I liked about Sentinels was it had creators who approached progressive social matters in a way that was mature, constructive, and multifaceted, and initially attracted fans who approached things the same way. Having had spent time in too many fandoms who approached social matters in tired shallow and often actively wokewashing toxic behavior, it was a welcome change.

But as of late I’ve seen it start creeping into the fandom. Women being attractive is bad! White people are bad! Americans are bad! Cishet relationships are bad! Christianity is bad and getting special treatment even when it’s an utter shallow Cheez Whiz that would be not be deemed real representation if it was a different religion being given the same treatment!

While my discontent with the fandom was primarily over the regularly occuring abusive and dishonest behaviors, the fandom starting to more and more adopt the shallow eye-rolling empty sloganeering “looking for things to be offended by” attitudes I’d been happy to leave behind elsewhere didn’t help my opinions on stepping way back any.

And this isn’t “keeping politics out of Sentinels” either. I like politics being in Sentinels the way C&A handle them, which is with nuance and constructive discussions of real world problems free of knee-jerking and sloganeering.

Sentinels can have people of color without dumping on white people. It can have people from other countries without dumping on Americans. It can have LGBT people without dumping on straight relationships. Adam draws both sexes rather attractively and even draws the men with more fanservice than the opposite. Etc. Yet seems the fandom can no longer handle that balance.

And there’s an irony here that religion is Sentinels’ one blind spot where it actually kind of treats Christianity with a lot of disdain and negativity (note how on top of the theme parking, Fanatic embodies a lot of bad extremely negative stereotypes about Christians and her Christian cohorts tend on average to be incompetent at best and evil at worst), yet even that negative treatment is somehow still seen as too good for certain people in the fandom even though as someone with Catholic upbringing I find it nose-crinkly.

Sorry I stepped in. I probably should have known that pointing out “The fandom actively asked for and liked Black Fist” and “You really shouldn’t be offended by Christianity being portrayed in Sentinels when it’s so cheez whiz, fake, and often actively negative to boot” would just result in people trying to come up with reasons why we shouldn’t view that as mattering when to me those are the most relevant factors, and the usual resulting endless go-round arguing.

Just to engage in thoughtful criticism of the media I love with other people who love it. My understanding is that Aeternus is wildly popular and I didn’t see my view represented, so I decided to contribute. I am not trying to say that you don’t have your own different and valid criticisms of Aeternus (and Fanatic) as well! Those also make a lot of sense, and thank you for articulating them.

I agree with your points about how well Christopher and Adam built the world of Sentinel Comics so far. Part of how they got there was by not writing only what they know, but by expanding their lens with empathy and understanding. I think that’s terrific. As a creator myself, they are role models for me. And most of the time, they do great. When they don’t, it’s nice to have a positive, respectful fandom that can have these conversations. (At least, that’s what I see as a forum-only participant. I’m getting the sense that your mileage may vary.)

I can say (as a Christian) that I am not personally a fan of Æternus, but not surprised or really offended by its existence. I do like that they haven’t tried to fully interweave it into biblical stories, so that it is removed from any of my actual beliefs.

This is the same reason I like that Fanatic isn’t actually an angel. It removes my beliefs from the game, and allows it to just be its own entity.

I think we got crossed up that when I asked “what you’re asking for here”, I meant in regards to “what would you have rather seen C&A do instead specifically here”. I was trying to get an idea of what you would consider a “better” depiction.

The fandom has never been good at being positive and respectful.

It’s good at claiming it is, and there are definitely specific individuals who actually live up to that, but the fandom as a whole is just as prone to toxicity and negativity as everywhere else but with less self-awareness and thus less capacity to effectively deal with it. But that’s a different post in and of itself.

This gets into why this specifically is a bit of a sore spot for me.

The way Sentinels depicts Christianity is probably the sociological misstep I find most annoying. A lot of it is cheez whiz theme park at best and “every negative stereotype about Christianity” at worst. And there’s a distinct lack of as I said the equivalents of characters like Nightcrawler and Daredevil while where their stories do deal with the negative sides of Christianity plenty of times it’s in a way recognizable to what real life adherents of it deal with.

And it’s a little ironic how this dovetails into discussions of representations of people of color, where statistically speaking black and Hispanic/Latine people IRL are as likely or even more likely to be religious or religion-adjacent, but it doesn’t come up with any of Sentinels’ black, Hispanic, and/or Latine characters. (Outside of Fanatic I mean, but she is the most negative and Cheez Whizzy depiction thereof so she doesn’t help any.)

But what tips it over into a sticking point versus annoyance is when some members of the fandom still characterize that cheez whiz negativity as being “favoritism” and somehow better treatment than other religions.

In discussions I’ve had elsewhere on the internet I’ve sometimes snarked that “privilege” is “actually having the exact same issues as everyone else but being denied the equal right to express upset about them”, and this particular topic of religion in Sentinels always tips over into that same flavor for me.

I always assume air “doesn’t count” in sci-fi. Otherwise phase-shifters would suffocate (as well as fall through the floor), teleporters would explode, speedsters would overheat, etc.

Or due to the nature of the curse he doesn’t need to breathe, but always feels like he’s not quite getting enough air. That’ll make you cranky enough to be a villain!

Personally, I liked Adam’s suggestion of naming him Hankerin’. If they weren’t being serious he could’ve also been Hangry.

You have it better than me. I get a song stuck in my head every time I hear the name, but it’s that blasted “Beep Beep” tune. It is literally impossible for me to take this character seriously when all I can imagine him doing is racing a Caddy in 2nd gear.

Also my headcanon insists his first name is Nash, of course. He’s as absurdist as anything in the Guise Book to me no matter what the intention behind him is.

If either of you would like a “more accurate” song, there’s this.

(And on that note, we know his full name - Robert Johnson)

As I said, the intention behind the character fails for me utterly because of the unfortunate association with that earworm of a song, which was inexplicably a favorite of my parents and my sister when I was much younger. And don’t even get me started on Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini…

I get what they’re going for, but that doesn’t affect my perception of him one bit.

I think they allowed the Naturalist focus of Tome to limit themselves.
Gwydion’s story involves changing from one animal to another just like Naturalist and Anansi the king of stories is one of Gwydion’s identities so I could see the writers connecting Naturalist to the greater universe by making this big reveal(retcon) in his book.

I also see Gwydion and his different identities a bit like Mister Mxyzptlk in “What ever happened to the man of tomorrow?” he was a goofball making mischief and playing pranks for 1000 years but now he is going to be monstrously evil for a while. Maybe 1000 years from now he will try being repentant.

Speaking of the conceit of the Rambler character… what are his motivations, exactly?

It kind of seems like he just wants to be left alone to play guitar in dive bars, and only has adventures in response to either being attacked or coming across an opportunity to make an advantageous deal. But why does he even try to get advantage at all, if he just wants to go back to the dive bars? He’s kind of a strange character to have as a protagonist.

At about 20 minutes into the episode they explain it pretty well with a “check kiting” metaphor. He pretty much has to keep an eye out for hustles he can pull off so that he’s got the resources needed to get out of trouble if/when his previous debts and wrongdoings catch up with him. How he got started isn’t clear, but once he started tricking/ripping off supernatural entities he had to stay on the treadmill pulling new scams to hopefully pay off or intimidate anyone/thing that tries to collect past-due bills.

They seem to think he’s a lot more gray than he really is, the guy’s really a scumbag con artist who just happens to pick on baddies often enough that people could confuse it for having some vestige of morals. I’ve known real-world people like that and they’re something to avoid like the plague. You can’t believe a word they say and they’re always out for themselves first and foremost, and many of them manage to drag innocent people down with them when their scams do catch up with them. One of those IRL examples got himself and the woman he was currently parasitizing shot dead by a fellow petty criminal he’d shafted years before.

Yeah, so far I’m personally not enjoying the new heroes in DE. (I made this observation in Discord earlier, but…) So far, we have/think we’re getting:

• Alpha - A dark anti-hero who takes out her own allies
• Darkstrife & Painstake - Dark anti-heroes
• Rambler - A dark anti-hero (?) who messes with people
• Fashion - A hopefully-not-dark (although they did say she’s darker than she originally was after her stint with the Bloodsworn) hero (hopefully )
• Felicia’s Legacy - Hopefully she’ll help get us back to actually positive characters…

Seems to be a lot of dark in the new.

We’re getting out of the main heroes and often in comics after you get past that you’re treading into the anti hero and darker hero role. Even as it stands you can look at any of the original EE characters and they all have something about/related to them that gets dark and isn’t as positive.

And some people still think The Punisher is a hero…

Oh, I understand all that. You need the comic heroes to be interesting, complex, and capable of evolving over time - otherwise they won’t survive through decades of storytelling. But we also know there are lesser characters out there that aren’t anti-heroes and that the creators can make whatever decisions they want to make, as they are creating all of it.

But my comment (as I said ) is really more about me than the characters. I just don’t enjoy playing anti-hero characters in the game. Other people do, and that’s fine - I’m glad they are there for them - they’re just not there for me.

I don’t really see Alpha as an anti-hero? That’s a bit like calling the Hulk an anti-hero. Her power/power source may be unconventional, but I don’t think she really does shady things? When she hurts others, it’s unintentional. That’s her “weakness”.

And a similar thing can be said about DS&PS - but they are certainly dark!

Rambler, however, is definitely an anti-hero.

But if you don’t like playing them, that’s fine

Yeah I’d consider Expat/Parse more anti hero than Alpha. I fully agree that Alpha comes across as the Hulk of the Sentinels Universe.

Darkstrife and Painstake have dark impulses due to their upbringings, but they both seem to be trying to do the right things, I wouldn’t call them anti-heroes. We have evidence of Painstake losing control, but that’s not the same thing as being an anti-hero.

I mean, she started out as a clothing designer/model in a romance book, and the original superhero take on her sounded about as grim and gritty as the Archie gang in costumes and capes. Fashion killed some folks during the Bloodsworn stuff later on, but “darker than the original” still leaves a lot of room before you reach the Punisher/Parse/ExPat threshold.

Seems reasonable to hold out hope that she’s not an edgy traumatized dark vigilante type. If one of her cards has her decapitating Spite with weaponized lingerie I’m going be both surprised and disappointed - albeit probably less so than Spite in that case.

Depends on your definition of anti-hero. Which has been a HUGE debate for most of the last century…

Personally, Parse and Expat I would classify as anti-heroes, though the latter gets better when on the team. Influence of Slim and Pete. The creepy twins I would classify as “dark” heroes, but that’s more a power source/nature not how they use it. Same with Alpha. I see her more as a cursed hero rather than an anti-hero.

Rambler feels more like an anti-villain. A David Xanatos type. The guy after his own thing, for his own reason, and occasionally is on the hero’s side, and sometimes against them.

One aspect of this point is, a character being interesting, complex, and capable of evolution does not require darkness! That’s one thing I love about a well-done Superman story, and I imagine good Haka or Legacy stories would fit a similar mold.

Exactly! Once again, Trajector nails my intention better than I ever could.

I would argue to some degree you need that darkness, weirdness, or way out there stuff occasionally to remind you why those other stories are great and true to the character. And sometimes you find those oddities fit that character better than expected.

It’s also the main reason, in inverse, that Superman is famously one of the hardest characters to write for in all of comics.

Rambler I can’t speak to, as I’ve only listened to the American Folktales and Alpha team-up episdes, not these last two that feature him,* but the way I see DS&PS is that Paynstayke wants to be a good person, because that’s how she was raised, but she has an innate predilection towards evil. Darkstryfe, meanwhile, wants to do evil, but has too much of a conscience to really be much good at it. So I feel that they’re both morally superior to, say, the Punisher — then again, that’s not a very high bar to pass. ; )

Alpha . . . I don’t think I have a very good grasp on her morality. She’s eaten at least one person, and has probably killed a good few . . . but it does seem like a big part of her story is controlling the beast within . . . and it looks like she’s been genuinely horrified at some of the things she did while blacked out.

Fashion is serious, yes, but from the tone of the Cosmic Codex and Greazer team-up stories, she’s not overly harsh or punishing.

Expat and Parse have both grown out of their murder-phases, I think. Expat because of her interactions with lots of heroes (Legacy, Felicia, the FF, and Scholar, in addition to those mentioned by @OddballPaladin), and both of them because the tone of comics just changed.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say that Superman is hard to write because he lacks darkness, but rather because he’s simply so powerful. There are plenty of other heroes who are around the same level of goodness as Big Blue.

*That said, I do think that, despite him occasionally being a protagonist, I view him more like a neutral third party. I imagine that he’d have a role similar to the Phantom Stranger or the Spectre.

Yeah, he’s pretty hard to challenge outside of re-using ideas that have been done nearly to death - and that’s led to some authors trying to throw him into realistic shades-of-gray no-good-option stories that just don’t work very well with his established character. He’s got weaknesses you can write into, but after all these decades it’s rare to see much innovation on that front that doesn’t wander into outright deconstruction.

The current Superman: Lost story is kind of noteworthy for finding a way to actually threaten him with something new - a lengthy exile from Earth and his supporting cast, followed by the trauma of time passing much more quickly for him than it did back home. Plays merry hell with a lot of established continuity of how spaceflight works in DC, and I’m not sure if they’ll nail the landing but so far it’s at least kept my attention.

Superman is easy to write conflict for. It’s just not HIS conflict. The danger is in the collateral damage.

Or, put in a very odd piece of fanfiction from some time back (a crossover where kryptonite doesn’t appear until past the halfway point): “He can’t be killed, he CAN be HURT.”

But he’s also an exception, and was specifically designed to be that way (more than one person has pointed out, a Jewish artist in the 30s and 40s developing a perfect physical specimen that hates the nazi’s with every fiber of his being is probably not an accident). So he’s not the best hero to bring up when you’re designing stuff. There’s a reason Legacy and Haka both have the limits they do. Another example that comes to my mind is the “Atlas types” from the Wearing the Cape books, which are the typical “flying brick” types, but don’t have some of the more esoteric powers like Supes’ breath, eyes, and the like.

The vastly underrated (although rarely updated) comic PS238 had a good take on that very common power set, where there are so many FISS (flight, invulnerability, strength, speed) heroes they’re treated like kind of second-class super-citizens. Up-and-coming young hero Julie Finster took the supranym 84 in part to emphasize the general disrespect they get and has become the de facto figurehead for the Infinite Vanguard, a FISS recognition movement.

At seven years old she could safely be called precocious, and despite her insecurities is arguably outdoing Kal-El’s performance at the same age. Really wish they’d wrap the current storyline and get back to what’s going on with her (and the rest of the cast). Tied with the Flea for my favorite character in that comic.

Sure, but also, Superman isn’t omnipotent. He’s really tough, not indestructible, and really strong, but not an unstoppable force. One simply needs to challenge him with threats of an appropriate tier — foes who can take a punch from him and dish them back. The same is true of all heroes (Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, etc.), not just Supes.

What’s more, physical conflict isn’t the only kind that exists; he’s certainly not overpowered when it comes to mental, social, or ethical dilemmas.

They are doing a fantastic job putting him up against Threats He Can’t Punch on the CW’s Superman and Lois show. The plot going on right now is that Lois has cancer, which is not only something Superman can’t do anything about but also challenges Clark’s trademark optimism.

I also remember some standout episodes of the 90s animated Superman show where Lex Luthor was doing evil stuff as usual, but hidden beneath shell companies and political maneuvering. I recall Supes floating outside Lex’s C suite and challenging him, and Lex responds, “prove it.” It was a great reminder that Lex makes a good nemesis for Superman not because of matching Supes power (or Kryptonite) for power, but because the Clark Kent reporter identity is also trying to unravel corporate shenanigans. We don’t really have a good analog for that matchup in Sentinel Comics.

But there could easily be stories where Legacy finds himself standing up for American democracy alongside politicians whose policies he detests, or finds himself on international tours that put US interests in conflict with what locally seems like the right thing to do. There’s a huge amount of material to mine there for social commentary and internal character conflict.

There’s a reason the 90s animated DC shows were some of the best examples of those heroes, until the CW stuff came along (and it’s still second place, as far as I’m concerned).

I imagine that a lot of conflict with the Organization is like that. Miss Information could have been like that, but she’s far too much of a diva. But, as C&A have pointed out, those kinds of things don’t make good gameplay. We don’t really have any kind of secret identity or day job involved in the gameplay, except with The Wraith and Alpha. The stories are probably there, but not in the cards. The whole “Matthew” story was not an Apostate vs Dark Watch card game, for instance.

Another great example of Lex’s tricksyness is when he won the 2000 election and became U.S. President, which of course Supes couldn’t do anything about.

Or, better yet, Legacy and Senator Parsons teaming up to take down a crooked politician together. Or, more generally, both of them tackling a problem together; that seems like a great untapped source of stories.

Perhaps, but I feel like the heroes — esp. Fixer and Wraith — don’t really acknowledge the authority of the Rook City PD, as they know that they’re (mostly) all corrupt.

Actually, I think that she’s too subtle for that. Her M.O. is that the heroes never even knew that it was her — hiding behind regulation seems much less like her than just plain old hiding.

Her reveal of the Evil Costume Switch as soon as Parse outed her would say otherwise…

Christopher’s cat evolves into an Elec-type Pouchbeast and begins eating the entire STLM grid…

I like the distinction that Lugh is a shapeshifter non-trickster and Gwydion is a different thing …the description I wanted to yell at them was “master of masks”.

ps diamonds not a color