Zapgunner

With his green skin, antennae, and high-tech pistol, the Zapgunner is, in fact, not an alien being. Bernard Einhorn was a feeble two-bit conman, scamming people in bars just to get by. During one such con, Einhorn was trying to convince a scientist that he had proof of extraterrestrial life. He had no such thing, but his claim was overheard by an actual undercover alien, who thought his cover had been blown. In a panic, this alien arranged things such that Einhorn would be trapped in an apparently alien form, distracting the scientist while he made his escape.

And so Einhorn was transformed into an alienoid form, but he also found the real alien’s raygun. Quickly noticing its power, Einhorn was able to escape the scientist and start using his strange new energy weapon to go on a crime spree he would never have been capable of when he was a frail loser criminal. With the help of this strange fortuitous transmutation, the Zapgunner had his the big leagues. Once barely worthy of the notice of the police, he is now an opponent of the Guild of Crime Fighters.

Termination Dwayne

Dwayne Nelson, a resident of Hoboken, is a troubled man. Dwayne has issues with alcohol, with anger, with authority. Of all the people you would want to wind up in a high-tech battlesuit, Dwayne is the last. But, somehow, Dwayne has indeed become mentally bonded to a high-tech battlesuit. Isn’t that always the way?

But having a powerful suit of armor capable to bringing down buildings and standing up to military shelling has not made Dwayne’s ambitions any grander. He is still more likely to rob a liquor store than to try to conquer the world. To make matters worse, the bond between Dwayne and his high-tech battlesuit functions even from a distance. Even when HAULER brings him in and Dwayne is separated from his suit, he can mentally control it to come and break him out again.

The name “Termination Dwayne” is something that I thought up very young, and a sketch of the character has been in my files. Now he gets his chance to shine! Or whatever. Dwayne’s full name and the fact he was a drunken loser were all there in my notes with the sketch, so I didn’t have to add much here tonight. I tied him to HAULER because a drunken crook seems like the sort of thing a cop-powered robot would be used to arrest.

Dayguard

Do monsters only come out at night? Do only shadows hide lurking evil? Is the sunlight a safe place? No. Monsters live in the daytime. Evil exists in in the broad daylight. If there’s any safety in sunlight it is thanks to the Dayguard.

Since time immemorial, a champion has been chosen to protect the world from mystical beings and evil spirits that walk among us. They live in our cities, not our wilderness. They can look like us, they can look like animals, they can look like monsters, or they can be invisible, but they are there. And the Dayguard is the only one who can find them. Many Dayguards of old have been locked up as insane, but Kennedy Light, the current Dayguard, strives to continue her work no matter how thankless.

I’m a nocturnal person and I think of the night as a perfectly pleasant time. Other people don’t feel that way, which is why so many horror takes place in the dark. But that is not a requirement of horror, so when I drew and named Dayguard on a whim, I decided that it might be good as a setting for Daylight Horror stories.

Montoroloxi the Magnificent

Planet Szunkring is highly a highly advanced world with sprawling metropolises and wonderful technology. But there is another side to Szunkring. The world’s abundant resources are fought over and those who get some use their resources primarily to get more and protect what they have. As a result, those with wealth have power and those without, have little. This division has created a suffering, desperate class of beings, some of whom are fed up and resort to violence, but others who just dejectedly go about their lives, unable to live up to the potential their great world should allow. But then there is Montoroloxi! Having invented a powerful suit of armor that can fly, lift great weights, survive direct bomb blasts, and much more. With this power Montoroloxi is fighting the status quo. Living in the wilderness, Montoroloxi has begun his quest to change things by helping the lower class. Raiding the rich and the corrupt, Montoroloxi finances his quest to build schools and hospitals for those who can’t afford the existing ones. Montoroloxi’s radical actions are not unnoticed, though. He has caught the attentions of the Council of Bosses, a corrupt group among the wealthy, have put their Security Minions into service to seek out the armoured upstart and bring him down. Can Montoroloxi survive to see his plans to fruition?

Montoroloxi is based off an old sketch of mine. The idea that he is some sort of power-armored alien Robin Hood is new, though. What does he look like under the armor? I’ll decide that the day that it actually matters. I have no idea where I came up with that weird idea for how his planet works.

In the interests of being easy on myself during this, the busy school season, I am going to rattle off some easy superheroes for a couple weeks. Instead of thinking up new characters and ideas, I’m going to use draw sketches of characters that already exist in my notes for my Hover Head stories.

As I mentioned last week, the New Superhero Team is a sort of rival group for the Team of Superheroes. Here we have two more members of that team:

The Sound Effector

Once a prominent sound technician, Amber Yoiks’s life changed after she helped record an album by a prog rock band made up of wizards. Accidentally inhaling some of their “Mystical Smoke”, Amber gained the ability to see, touch, and control sound. For example, if she heard a “POW” it would appear before as a floating word in a starburst, which she could then throw like a shuriken, or ride like a hoverboard, or just expand to make it deafening. With powers like that, she figured “might as well be a superhero.” You heard it here first.

Algo

When you are on a superhero team that routinely fights alien invaders, it can start to seem like you just don’t like aliens. That’s not the sort of image a group wants to foster, so that’s why the New Superhero Team brought in Algo, the Token Alien. With a ton of weird and wonderful powers, Algo is not only useful, he’s also a constant source of entertainment. He’s one of the good ones!

Astrona

Space is full of mystery. The human mind is only capable of knowing so much and there is so much more than that in the universe. Astrona is from that part. Although she takes the form of a humanoid woman, Astrona seems to be some sort of living embodiment of the idea of helping others. She soars the cosmos detecting what she calls “scarred stars” which have been poisoned by negativity. Around these stars are often planets with societies that have problems (disasters, tyrannical rulers, plague, etc.) and Astrona comes down as a sort of messianic figure and helps them, which heals the star.

Astrona is just my attempt to make a trippy cosmic sci-fi character in the style of the seventies comics when cosmic was an in-style thing. The problem is, I haven’t read all that much of the trippy cosmic sci-fi from the seventies, so I’m kinda phoning it. In case it isn’t obvious that is supposed to be a sort of Saturn-style ring around her. I have no idea how that works either.

Konwaag, the Magic Hunter

Konwaag comes from a planet that we would describe as post-apocalyptic. The world, once a high-tech utopia, was brought to ruin by a cult of wizards who sought to take over. Although the wizards were overthrown, the cost was too great. Konwaag grew up in the aftermath of this war and saw the damage that magic did, so when he found a trove of war-time technology designed specifically for hunting down wizards, and a space ship to go with it, he set about the universe to hunt down those who would tamper with magical forces.

I’ve mentioned more than once that I like aliens to look less human, but this is a character I drew from an old sketch I had lying around. I’m going to claim that under his costume Konwaag has all sorts of things that make him look less human…

Anyway, I don’t think Konwaag could stand on his own as a hero, probably, but I like the idea of him being a rival to another superhero, sort of like how Vartox was a rival for Superman, except instead of fighting over women, the hero (let’s say Noblewoman) would have to prevent him from attacking magic-users who aren’t evil, but they’d still work together against legitimate threats.

The Red Shark

Murray Carter was an archaeologist studying a shipwreck when he was caught in a freak electrical storm. Struck by some sort of mystical red lightning bolt that caused his body to adapt to the undersea environment. Strong enough to withstand the pressures of the deep sea and able to swim faster than the quickest sea animals, Murray created the identity of “the Red Shark” to fight some pirates who tried to steal the archaeological findings. Since then the Red Shark has continued to fight crime on the high seas.

The aquatic superhero is a tradition almost as old as the superhero itself, with guys like Namor and Aquaman dating back to 1939 and 1941 respectively. While everybody loves to make jokes at Aquaman’s expense (because the Internet will always love an easy running gag), these guys are a tradition that I had to get in on, so the Red Shark is the result. It is, of course, worth noting that I probably hold the world record for writing the most Haikus about Namor.

The Green Camera

Matthew Callahan was an intrepid award-winning reporter known for putting himself at risk to get at the truth. On one case, however, Callahan was shot in the hip and left unable to walk. When appearing on a radio show to tell his story. The broadcast was picked up by aliens who, liking the cut of Callahan’s jib, came to him in the night and gave him a device they called the Green Camera.

When holding the alien Camera, Callahan can fly, but that is not its primary use. As you would expect, the Camera takes pictures. The Camera sees only the truth. In addition to being able to zoom in and all that sort of thing, its images can see through any sort of untruth. The disguises of alien conquerors and spies alike fall apart through the eye of the Green Camera. Also, it has a blinding flash that can be useful. With all this, Callahan is able to once again fight for truth and justice.

This is a pretty straight-up Green Lantern-inspired hero. I’ve always liked the image of the (I think) Golden Age Green Lantern carrying the big lantern around, so that’s why the Green Camera here gets a big bulky device, instead of a little ring (or camera phone).