There’s not really any thematic link between the two heroes I’m giving you this week, but here they are:

Stegosauress

Stegosauress has the spine, tail, and thagomizer of a stegosaurus. There’s not much else that one needs to know, but I suppose I’ll come up with some more anyway.

Following her origin, she had Stegosaurus powers and became Stegosauress. Now she fights crime with her Stegosaurus powers. I don’t know what more I could possibly say!

This is a character created name first, that’s for sure. And I admit, the particular bad naming joke could work with any dinosaur ending with -saurus (Tyrannosauress, Brachiosauress, anything), but I’m not doing that. Stegosauruses are the best and I see no reason to diversify.

Lex Techno

Lex Techno lives in a world where the bad guys are winning, and the heroes have to be tough just to survive. Superhuman dictators have conquered the world and divided it among themselves. Wars rage between them causing destruction and pollution on a scale the world has never seen. Slavery, genocide, and viral warfare are all over the place like they’re going out of style. Comfortable shoes cost way too much. It’s basically a world you don’t want to live in.

But Lex Techno lives there. And he’s trying to make the place workable. Lex Techno is a cyborg, more than 50% technology, and he’s been fighting his entire life. The leader of a proactive squad of violent super-soldiers called Raid Force Zero. The group performs hit-and-run attacks on the villainous despots and try to make a difference as best they can. With all necessary brutality.

The 90s have a reputation in comics as being a time when stupid violent stories starring stupid violent guys with big guns and shoulder pads. First of all, the 90s were the decade when I got into comics, so I know very well that that is an oversimplification that is just wrong. There was no point during the 90s when there wasn’t something good being done. Sure, I admit that for a couple of years that bleak kind of hero was the dominant trend, but you can’t write off the whole decade.

But Lex Techno is not a rejection of those 90s Anti-Heroes, he’s an embracing of them, because simply being a 90s-style character is not inherently bad. The cyborg soldiers and killer vigilantes of that era are as much a part of superhero mythology that we should accept that and deal with it. So, with Ol’ Lex here, I’d try to explore what kind of heroism you’d expect to find in the bleakest of circumstances.