It’s 1935 and all is not well in the penitentiary system. But here comes Ol’ Agnes MacPhail to bust some heads. She’s the first woman to check out the conditions in the prison and she doesn’t like what she sees. Her train of thought seems to be: “Hey, beating these guys up isn’t making them better citizens and actually might cause some problems in the long run so, maybe let’s not do that?”. The guys in Parliament assure her that she’d just too delicate, because she’s a boobhaver, to know what prison is all about. She shows them what actually goes on in the prison (I guess they’d never actually bothered to check) and seems to pretty quickly get people on her side.

It’s a good thing to remember both our first “woman MP” and that improving prisons is a good thing, so that’s nice. The “Is This Normal!?” is definitely memorable, but it is not especially useful as a quoteable line. The parliament scene reminds me of the bit in the Moment about the women in the medical system. An established patriarchy trying to shout down the women who are trying to making progress. At least that other group had some glorious sideburns. I think I settle somewhere about Four out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake here.

Shapemaster

Herb Caesar was a young man when he gained the power to change into shapes. But he couldn’t turn into other people, or even animals or even, say, a car. He is limited to simple shapes. Squares, cubes, spheres, etc. Still, he was inventive, and found many ways to use these powers in creative ways. For several years Herb fought crime as the Shapemaster, but it never seemed to pay off for Herb. He couldn’t pay his bills, he couldn’t keep a job. A supervillain killed his best friend, and a girlfriend turned into another supervillain and blew up his house. Eventually he realized it wasn’t worth it. To get any satisfaction, he decided, he had to look out for Number One.

In real superhero comics, well mainstream real superhero comics anyway, nothing ever changes. No superhero will ever go bad for real. It might even last a few years, but the non-stop soap opera of it requires that every twist is eventually, shockingly twisted back. Anyway, with Shapemaster I can pretend it happened in my little superhero universe anyway.

The Witch

Three hundred years ago a woman was accused to consorting with demons to get mystical power. She totally had done exactly that. Those who accused her couldn’t do a damn thing because she was a magical killing machine. Any of her accusers that she hadn’t drowned or crushed or burned at the stake decided that it wasn’t worth the risk of even trying to stop her.

Now, in the present, the Witch still lives. She has used her mystical powers to found a worldwide criminal empire and only the emergence of these newfangled “super heroes” has ever posed any threat to her. She will have to deal with them.

Here I wanted to take the idea of a witch and do it differently. I wanted the opposite of every good witch idea, but also to avoid the standard look of a cartoon witch with green skin and black hat and all that. I planned on giving her a better name, but then I decided I liked the simplicity as an excuse to stop trying to think one up.

Color is back! And I don’t just mean for this post! Over the last week, and at the expense of working on SecGov, I have gone back through Super Sunday and colored them all. They are all now in color! I figure the Internet will care more if they’re flashier, right? If anyone cares to go back through the Super Sunday tag, they’ll find a whole colorful world of superheroes and villains. This will make any comments I made about colors in the posts obsolete, but that’s probably worth it.

The Man Defender

Danny Adam Stark was just a regular guy in his early twenties until a chemically-infused pollution cloud caused a strange atmospheric disturbance and a bolt of lightning struck young Danny. After some time in hospital, his life continued. Over time he began to notice he was changing. He’d grown stronger and faster. He discovered he could jump almost a mile and shrug off a bullet to the face. Danny decided to use his powers to help those most in need to help: men. Danny sees society’s attempts to emasculate men as the primary cause of all the problems and if only the roles of the genders can be fixed, things will return to the way they were in the good old days. With this goal, the Man Defender will strike out against prominent feminists and lawmakers (especially females) who are trying to change things. He will break accused rapists out of jail, because the women were obviously asking for it. As far as he is concerned, he is the only hero addressing these issues of misandry and all the others are pathetic failures.

I’ve been doing a lot of world building stuff with the Supervillain Sunday sketches, which I enjoy, but I haven’t done as much addressing issues as I did with the Superhero Sundays. One of things a superhero story can do is use villains to represent real problems in the world. ‘Cause then we get to have a superhero beat up those problems, and that can be fun.

Hekkar

The demon-sorceress Hekkar is obsessed with gaining more power through a process known as “eating magic users”. Merging with the mystically altered flesh of those who use magic, Hekkar grows stronger, though what her goals may be beyond that are not known. But there is one who Hekkar can’t devour for power: the Conjuroid. The demon-fighting robot hero is the ideal defense against this demonic glutton, though as she is quick to point out, isn’t the Conjuroid just another being that destroys demons in its own quest to become stronger? Are they so different?

I admit, this one isn’t addressing an issue, really. I mean, sure, I worry about the threat of magicians being devoured as much as the next person, but the next person doesn’t care that much either.