Okay, we’re out of July, so instead of looking back at old characters I created as a kid, let’s see what new things I’ve got to offer:
Halberd Man
Dirk Carson worked for the movies. He was a stunt man and weapons expert specializing in medieval and fantasy epics. Dirk’s brother was a director and the two often worked together. It was a good time, but eventually Dirk’s brother wound up in debt to some crooked businessmen. Increasingly desperate, he embezzled from the studio. When Dirk found out, he offered to help, but it was too late, his brother was captured, then killed by a hitman before his case could go to court. Dirk, unable to find justice for his brother through legal means, Dirk wound up throwing together a ridiculous costume from the studio wardrobe and using a halberd to seek his own revenge. The Halberd Man now stalks the night, bringing down the criminal empire that is responsible for his brother’s death.
There’s a lot of superheroes (and villains) based around old-style weaponry. The most popular is going to be your archer characters, who are all descended from Robin Hood, really, but you can find characters with swords and whips and axes and hammers. So anyway, it was with that in mind that I picked some obsolete piece of weaponry and make a superhero out of it.
Horribloid
Roaming the countryside is a creature, the creation of a mad scientist who tampered with things man was not meant to tamper with. The Horribloid! Large, strong, brutal, it hides in caves and woods, roaming wherever it may. It is occasionally seen by people, who flee before its fearsome visage, but it seems to want nothing to do with people and keeps to itself. Or so it seems. In fact, the Horribloid is not alone. The Horribloid is able to communicate with animals, and has friends among the birds, rabbits, foxes, and other animals of the area. In the service of his friends, he has become something of a superhero to these animal civilians, a strange visitor who devotes his time to their protection.
This is one of those cases where I drew something and then had to make up a story to go along with it. I look at this guy and I think of the kind of monsters that might show up in some Golden Age comics, but since this is a good guy I had to flip some of the story points around. But then you just get Frankenstein’s Monster, so I threw the bit about animal-talkin’ and I had something new.