Some surprise hours at work mean I’m running late on this Super Sunday, but who cares right?

Last year, during the Superhero Sundays, I spend July doing the supporting cast of my Justice-Man character. This year, I’ll do some of his villains.

The Chopper

The Chopper is Justice-Man’s arch-nemesis and he’s the most feared man on the Earth. Samuel O’Hara inherited powers from his father: He can generate blades of telekinetic force from his forearms that can cut through pretty much anything. That’s neat and all, but it isn’t a power that would alone make someone the most dangerous in a world full of superhumans, but O’Hara makes up for that by being a ruthless and cunning criminal mastermind. O’Hara started as a serial killer in his teens. Eventually he was caught, but his powers caught the notice of a mysterious unknown organization. Freeing the Chopper to use him as a field agent, and later as an instructor for other agents, the organization gave O’Hara the time and freedom he needed to sow the seeds he would later use to build a criminal empire. This same organization would later use a teenage boy as a weapon, the same boy who would become Justice-Man, but by then the Chopper was on his own.

Now, decades later, Chopper’s biggest asset is his ruthlessness. He runs an international organization that includes armies of robots and cyborgs all completely loyal to their brutal master, but law enforcement agencies, and even superheroes, are reluctant to work against him. Chopper’s powerful army keeps other, potentially worse villainous groups from gaining a stronger footing, and any good guy who does try to oppose them is met with swift retaliation against friends and family. Only Justice-Man is willing to do anything against O’Hara and even the other heroes tend to think he is riling up a force he shouldn’t.

Powersaw

Powersaw was once a woman who just happened to find some sort of magical unbreakable saw that seemed to be able to cut through anything. Using this as a mercenary, the woman took the name Powersaw. As time went on, she had the blade cybernetically attached to her arm, and since then has been replacing more and more of her person with cybernetics. She’s not worried about losing her humanity, though. After all, a person who discovers a magic saw blade and her first instinct is to use it as a mercenary isn’t all that high on humanity to begin with. Justice-Man encounters a lot of superhuman mercenaries in his career and Powersaw is one of the toughest.

It was not intentional that I scheduled two villains who could cut through anything today, but I don’t care. Deal with it.

The program I use to make my Secret Government Robots is called Paint.NET and usually I find it extremely useful. I like to think that over the years I’ve gotten better at using it. A week or so ago, the software updated and it has changed a few things just enough to slow down the process of comic making as I have taught it to myself over the years. I’ll probably have to change my style a bit to speed things up, but I don’t want to do that in the middle of a story. Oh well. C’est la vie.

Another thing that has been slowing me down as far as comic pages is concerned, is that I’ve been doing a lot of character sketches. Ever since I started to color the Super Sunday sketches, which I do with a program called GIMP (almost exclusively for a function to expand my selection, which Paint.NET doesn’t have), I have discovered that I straight up love doing sketches of my characters. I’ve drawn all sorts of characters from SecGov and Hover Head just for my own amusement (and partially so that I can have easily-located reference images). Someday I’ll find a good use for them on the site and it will justify the time I’ve spent on them…

In the dystopian world of Universe Red, there are a multitude of evil governments. One of these, based in Europe, is an extreme right-wing group that holds on to power with an army of superhuman agents. They are:

The New Leader

Manfred Feigenbaum is the masked leader of the Nuclear Nazis. Though he began his career as a relatively normal, and relatively unsuccessful, politician, some radioactive accident has transformed him. It is rumored that beneath his mask he is deformed, though that rumor is false. The accident, rather than marring Feigenbaum, has improved him, has made him superhuman. He now feels that the masses are undeserving of seeing his visage. Having not aged in the two decades since his accident, the New Leader of the Nazi party feels confident that he can play the long game and guide the world toward a glorious new Reich.

Tanksolder

Willie Andrews, Jr is an American. Raised in an impoverished town, Willie was in and out of prison for years and found his place among a white supremacist group. When the Nuclear Nazis came to power in Europe they put out an announcement that they would accept white immigrants who wanted to join them. Once there, Willie applied to the army and was accepted to the superhuman agents program. Given superhuman strength and a suit of armor with guns and stuff, he became the Tanksoldier.

Stormstriker

Jean-Francois Venner is a French teenager who ran away from home to join the Nuclear Nazis, wanting to get on to what he considered the likely winners of the war in Europe. Also a graduate of the superhuman agent training, Jean-Francois has the ability to fly and shoot bursts of electricity. His brother has since become a prominent solder for an opposing government, also with super powers.

Overtrooper

The identity of the Overtrooper is unknown. He is touted as an example of the ideal soldier, and indeed he is a force on the battlefield, but he has never spoken in public. It is almost as if he has no personality at all beyond his role as solder. Which is, perhaps, the ideal solder after all.

Okay, notes: Nazis and superhero comics have been together a long time. It makes sense considering the Golden Age of superhero comics was almost exactly coincides with the Second World War. And, to make it that much easier, the Nazis come as close to supervillains as you can get in the real world. They have their recognizable uniforms and ideals that can pretty much only be seen as evil.

Still, I kinda want to see less of the Nazis in superhero comics. It’s overdone. I mean, my favorite villain in superhero comics is a Nazi (well, when written well the Red Skull will use any ethos to further his evil ends, but most often that is Nazism). But in cases like Captain America, having the villains he fought in the war still be active today makes it seem like the heroes haven’t accomplished a damn thing. In any case, the Nuclear Nazis here would be a Neo-Nazi group with no members dating back to the original Nazi party.

I inked these guys after the pen I liked best ran out of ink. I’m not really happy with the way they turned out with the very thin pen I used. But who cares, really? Also, all four were taken from old Junior High-era PDR sketches, which means that though I see some similarities between Overtrooper and the Winter Solder, my design came from the era before either the movie or Bucky’s return to the comics, so I don’t have to feel bad about it.

Finally: in the Europe of Universe Red I have also established the character Killshadow. Something could be done with that.