Bludgeonak

There is dimension called the Bronze Zone where there is a world ruled by an evil, powerful warlord called Oppressar. Oppressar holds power with the help of an army of pseudo-mechanical henchmen created from a cosmic-energy factory on the planet’s moon. But during a time of special celestial alignment one of the henchmen was created with more energy than was intended, making it smarter and stronger than its brethren. That henchman, designated Bludgeonak, saw Oppressar for the evil he is and escaped. Now Bludgeonak sides with the scattered rebels who live in the underground tunnels of the Exiled Gods of the Bronze Zone.

I was definitely going for a Jack Kirby vibe with this one (specifically his later crazy cosmic stories). Obviously as I am, at best, a reluctant artist, I don’t think I am fit to hold a candle to Kirby, but I couldn’t commit to a year of superhero creation without visiting his style. Bludgeonak was a character made up on the spot at the time of sketching, and his story made up on the spot again at the time of writing this. I don’t know why I decided to go with the headless torso kind of design (maybe I was thinking of Arnim Zola), but those circles on his chest are supposed to be his eyes. For the record, I’m picturing a color scheme of bright oranges and red mixed with black.

Brain Pain

When J. Paul Dean was born, he seemed like an ordinary child, but as he grew older it was clear that something was wrong. While his body grew rapidly, surpassing a normal adult size by the time he was ten years old, his head never changed from its original infant size and appearance. And apart from the physical aspect, there was something else: he could read minds. In his late teens, he was contacted by the Mind Set, a loose community of mind-powered individuals who gave him a home and helped him adjust to society.

Now, as an adult, Brain Pain has become an adventurer working with the Strange Squad. He’s something of a celebrity superhero, appearing in television interviews and getting book deals. Perhaps most importantly: when he goes into dangerous situations, he wears a helmet.

Brain Pain is one of the characters I thought up as a kid (which is also my excuse for the name). The whole tiny head and massive muscles thing was supposed to be a twist on the frail telepaths with big heads that are the more common formula. It’s just clever enough that it stuck around in my memory.

Sometimes I remember that posting my opinion of movies is a perfectly valid use for a website.

So Marq and I saw the new Star Trek movie the other day. I’m going to preface this by saying that I enjoyed it. I have to clarify that because it is basically all complaining from this point on:

I’m going to try to avoid spoiling the movie, but I must say that my biggest complaint is one that I and many others predicted. I went in accepting that this was the case, so I was actually thinking for some time that I liked the way they were going about it. They’d taken what I didn’t want to see and were showing it in such a way that I thought “Hey, they’re doing it differently than I expected, so that’s good” but then it all came crashing down.

I thought the point of the whole movie time-travel reboot relaunch thing was to do things in a new way for a new generation of viewers. The cast of the new movies is definitely good enough that I want to see them doing their thing. Their own thing, specifically. Large plot points in this movie are only significant in their relation to old Star Trek stuff and I think that that is a shame. At least, I suppose, now that they’ve shot their wad for this particular plot they will get to do something new next time around (Note: I will pay Hollywood as much as Ten Canadian Dollars to make a movie based off the Frog of Fortosia).

Secondly, I know I’m just a cranky old man, but can we have movies rely just a little less on setpieces? It really takes me out of movies when I have thoughts like “Did this fight scene really need to happen on a flying car?” I fully accept that plenty of people will just say that I don’t like fun, and those people are probably correct, but I stand by it. If a fight scene is meant to have emotional importance in the narrative, you shouldn’t have to try so damn hard to dress it up and make it interesting.

Finally, I honestly hope that this is the last movie I will ever see in which someone is hanging over a ledge, clinging on for their life and at the exact second they lose their grip someone appears to grab their hand. Honestly.

There’s at least two other things I consider worthy of discussion, but they’re both give away even more of the plot, so maybe I’ll get back to those some other day.

Here’s these guys again:

In the interests of working through my catalogue of characters a little quicker, today I’m going to introduce not just a couple of heroes, but an entire team. Just take a handful of the characters that don’t impress me enough on their own and throw them into a group, right? It works in comics, it will work here too. And so, I give you:

The Guild of Crime Fighters is not the top-level hero group of their world, but they are still devoted fighters of crime. They’re the street-level heroes who may not be the best, but that just means they work harder. They are:

Crescendo

Derrick Addison is Crescendo. He’s a former boxer with a flair for style and a trumpet that can shoot sonic blasts.

I like this guy’s design. I’m picturing his suit being blue and red, though I can’t make up my mind about which parts are which color.

Twinhammer

Rosie Stewart is Twinhammer. She’s got superhuman strength and two powerful hammers she can use to channel that strength directly into the faces of bad guys.

I sketched this character and struggled for days to come up with a decent name. Then I just decided to name her after those hammers she’s holding. The fact she has that “T” sort of design going on make me assume it was the right name.

The Whirl

Omar Kapoor is the Whirl. With the ability to control air (or water if he happens to be in water) so that it swirls, he can probably also use it to glide and cushion himself when falling. That sort of thing.

I wanted to draw a character with a vortex kinda thing going for him, but then I drew a sucky vortex. I don’t know how the professionals erase ink on a drawing, but PDR just rolls with it.

The Human Cloudburst

Jessica Nagano is the Human Cloudburst. With the power to “storm up” she covers herself in cloud and can shoot rain and generate lightning and thunder.

This is a character who I think could have merited a solo post, had I been better at drawing clouds. I’m not, so now she’s on this team. There’s a number of superheroes who have names like “The Human Whatever” and I think it is good to have some women in that category, so we don’t think of men as the generic model of a human.

Toughskull

Daniel Garcia is Toughskull. Toughskull is tough and wears a skull mask. He’s a superhuman vigilante who intends to clean up the streets or die tryin’.

This is another case where I drew some hero and had no idea what to name it. Just stuck a couple of words together and we’re done. This stuff is easy. His role on the team would be the troublemaker, I bet. He’s the guy who would always want to go off on his own. And he’d have a rivalry with Twinhammer about who was strongest. That sort of thing.