Here’s an old image I drew for Contains2, but I stumbled across it recently and decided to bring it back:

Also, Phone Guys:

Marv Thinker, The World’s Dumbest Mentalist

A plane crashed into a mysterious jungle leaving only one survivor, an infant child. Discovered by members of a hidden tribe, the infant was taken to their secret hidden city. This tribe had secret mental powers. As the boy grew, he learned telepathy, telekinesis, and all the sorts of mental arts that the tribe possessed. Eventually, though, the boy became an adult and, in keeping with the traditions of the tribe, had to find himself. In his unique case, this meant Marv had to leave the village and learn about the outside world. In the outside world, Marv has powers that make him peerless, but he is also a freaking idiot.

Marv Thinker grew up without any kind of schooling outside training his mental powers, and he also has no familiarity with societal mores. This oblivious but powerful young man wound up in a crime-ridden American city and soon found himself in trouble with the mob (though he barely realized it). It was only the intervention of Marcy DaCosta, a private investigator who happened upon the scene. Marcy, whose business was failing, saw a chance, with Marv, to have a gimmick: a mind-reading detective would be sure to make money. So began the Marv Thinker: Mentalist Detective Agency, where Marv is a sort of front man, and Marcy does all the actual work.

Marv Thinker is one of the few ideas I’m using for a Super Sunday sketch for which I have a lot of desire to actually write. Like Noblewoman, I have actual ideas for this character and would love to get a chance to do them someday.

Captain Fire

Captain Fire is the second in command of Raid Force Zero, the superhero team who live in a terrible dystopian society and fight a hard fight to improve things. With fire-casting abilities and a military background, Captain Fire is a formidable warrior devoted to saving the world. She is also capable of teleportation by fire, meaning that she can step into a flame in one part of the world and exit a flame elsewhere. She can’t take the team with her, but it is useful for occasional covert operations.

There isn’t much to say about Captain Fire, really. I like the idea of such a generic, non-gendered superhero name being used by a woman (a couple of the Captain Marvels was a woman, though that did not last), and she’s also wearing a heckuva lot more layers than superhero ladies generally get to wear. That stuff is well and good and important, but mostly I wanted to flesh out Raid Force Zero a little bit more.

I haven’t done much posting lately having been kinda busy. I’ll be busy next week too, probably, but I will try harder to do some posting. If I don’t do it, who will?

We’re only a few weeks away from school starting back up and I am surprised that it is so soon. I suppose working full time means that Summer vacation isn’t going to feel like much, but it really didn’t feel like much. I hope little kids realize how good they’ve got it. But they don’t. They’re idiots.

This week in Phone Guys, a character dies!!!

Karl B. Franklin, esq.

Born into a wealthy family, Karl Franklin had the opportunity to live his life any way he wanted. He wanted to see the world, so he has spent years travelling to exotic locations, studying at the best schools, and meeting interesting people. Naturally, this led to a life of adventuring. He has raided many a dungeon and fought smugglers in many an archaeological dig. To aid in his adventures Karl carries a sword, a gun, a magic amulet, a pipe, and a bag of tricks, but that is not all: over the years he has somehow acquired a pair of horns and a prehensile tail. Some might consider those to be deformations, but since they come in handy, he has no desire to get rid of them. Karl B. Franklin is an adventure-having expert and loves every second of it.

Karl Franklin is based off of an old sketch I had around, but I didn’t have a story for him until just now. I meant for the character to have a form of dwarfism, but I’ve never done the research to know which type (probably achondroplasia, I guess) because there’s not a lot of little person characters going on in comics. I mean, I can name about a dozen, but I’m crazy knowledgeable. I would figure that the most prominent example in comics would be Puck, of Alpha Flight, except from his backstory he is not a natural dwarf, but is the victim of a magic curse. That’s stupid, so Karl Franklin is my own diminutive guy hero who suffers from magic effects, but those two things are not related.

Combustaboy

With the ability to burst into flame and fly, little Timmy McIsaac became Combustaboy, the Fiery Teen, to make enough money to pay his way through college. Superheroing is not what Timmy wants to do with his life. To him, this is just a job. His heart isn’t in it and he let’s it show. Still, if you can create fire at will, there’s always going to be someone who is willing to pay you for something, right?

The story I came up with for Combustaboy is just a young superhero, but since I’ve gotta talk about something down here, I’m going to go with teen-aged sidekicks. The concept of teenage heroes is ubiquitous in comics, but for some reason the concept of a kid sidekick has faded away since the olden times. With the exception of Batman and Robin, teen sidekicks are almost never treated seriously anymore. I guess that is because you’d have to be Bruce Wayne-style crazy to recruit children into a war on crime. But still, here’s a stray thought I had on the idea: in the 1940s, a sixteen-year-old was more of an adult than a sixteen-year-old is these days. It was much more common back then for teenagers to drop out of school and take jobs and help support their families. My argument is harmed by the fact that the teen sidekicks in the comics of those days were more likely to act like eleven-year-old than grizzled sixteenagers, but I do think that when you’re telling stories of olden times, it isn’t as absurd for a superhero to have a kid backing him up. I mean, teenagers are sent to fight in real wars and some even lied to get in before they were of age (heck, Calvin Graham was twelve in WWII), so a kid helping out a superhero is not one of the most absurd superhero tropes as far as I’m concerned.