Back when I introduced Gus Comet, very early in this whole mass-character-creation experiment, I mentioned several members of his rocketship crew. Let’s give them a moment to shine:

Andrianna

When the robots colonized Saturn, they created a constitutional monarchy headed by a King and Queen. Their daughter, Andrianna, the Princess of the Robots, was the first robot built in that new kingdom. The thing is, though, robots don’t age and die like humans, so the King and Queen are still in power and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere any time soon. Andrianna quickly got bored with sitting around the castle knowing she’d never move on to ruling the land, so she left her home to join the Rocket Officer Corps. She is now the second-in-command on Gus Comet’s rocket, a life considerably more interesting than that of idle royalty.

Brains O’Brien

Raising himself on the streets of Brooklyn, Brains had to learn to fight. He had no family to protect him, so he had to provide for himself. One of a gang of similarly-destitute children, Brains was the Smart One. When authorities would occasionally try to force them into school, the others would wonder what use all those facts could possibly be in “real life”, but Brains didn’t see it that way. Any scrap of knowledge he learned was something that could possibly be used to keep him alive one more day, like ammunition, so it was best to stock up. One day, on the run from the law, Brains was separated from his gang and used some of his knowledge to find a hiding spot on board a rocketship. But when the ship took off, Brains became an unintentional stowaway. Luckily, Gus was impressed with the kid’s nerve and his wits, so he gave him a place on board.

Hyram

In the far-flung future that is the twenty-first century, a lot of experimentation has been done on animals. Hyram is a result of that experimentation. An ordinary hyena genetically engineered to have excellent intelligence, and given cyborg limbs, Hyram joined the Rocket Officer Corps as an investigator. There is nothing Hyram enjoys more than gathering scraps of evidence and hunting down a criminal.

Space Plunderer

The Space Plunderer is the meanest, greediest criminal in the galaxy. Commanding a crew of alien criminals from dozens of species, the Plunderer, a Bessaji, travels from world to world to steal resources. Colonies everywhere live in constant fear of the Plunderer, but the Plunderer fears nobody. The Plunderer even laughs as Gus Comet and crew pursue him across the Cosmos. It seems like every day the Plunderer gets stronger and stronger. Can the good guys ever win?

The planet Szunkring is one full of intense class warfare. The rich weigh heavily on the poor, but the superhero Montoroloxi stands for the little guy. But who else is there?

(Montoroloxi was one of the ideas I spat out in Superhero Sunday year that least grabbed me, so I figured maybe if I threw some more details onto it I might find it more interesting. Let’s see if it works.)

Elimpador

Elimpador was born to a low-class family in one of the slum areas of a major Szunkrun city. She tried to do things the honest way, she got a job working as a powertube cleaner, but when a new technology was developed that made that job obsolete, she was fired. Before she could find work elsewhere, she was beaten up by an angry mob who hated her for being a lazy unemployed drain on society. While she was recovering from those wounds, she was unable to pay for her home. And when she found that nobody was willing to hire a homeless wretch, she had to resort to stealing to stay alive. A week later, she was in prison, and considered it a blessing, because at least she was being fed. When Montoroloxi broke her out, she was at first reluctant to go, but she has since found new worth by organizing operations for Montoroloxi’s underground allies.

Lacalafta

Lacalafta was also born to a poor family, but found a way out. Being a naturally tough individual, Lacalafta sold her services as a bodyguard or as a soldier. The well-off Szunkruns have no desire to do their own dirty work, but sometimes they need someone to be beaten up. In such cases, they can hire Lacalafta, who has no qualms about beating up the sick or the needy as long as it makes her own life better. Since Montoroloxi began his crusade of protecting the weak and the poor, however, Lacalafta’s job has gotten much harder.

Mux

The Szunkruns are not the only intelligent species on Szunkring. Mux is a member of a small lizard-like people also native to the world. Mux’s people, though, did not develop currency or technology, or even an interest in it. They are content to dwell in the planet’s jungles with their simple lives foraging for berries and lazing around on hot days. But those jungles are shrinking because of the actions of Szunkruns who crave what resources the jungles can give them. To protect his home, Mux has joined Montoroloxi’s battle against the rich jerks. Mux has all kinds of neat powers like sticking to walls, regenerating limbs, and being able to freeze and thaw out unharmed.

Boyon the Robot

Planet Szunkring is a very high tech sort of place. All over the planet there are intelligent robots designed to make things easier for the Szunkruns (the ones who can afford it anyway). One of those robots is called Boyon the Robot, and it has come to the conclusion that Szunkrun society could be better. Though it continues on with its regular robotic duties, Boyon the Robot has also decided to help Montoroloxi who seems to be working toward the kind of society that Boyon the Robot would prefer. As such, Boyon the Robot is Montoroloxi’s undercover agent, able to get into all of the places no regular Szunkrun could.

In a world where evil is winning, superheroes need to be rougher and meaner if they want to make a difference. That is exactly why Lex Techno, had to create Raid Force Zero, a team of supersoldiers intent on destroying evil once and for all. We’ve already met Captain Fire and Earth-Red’s local Beam, but who else makes up the worlds violent saviors?

With Lex Techno, I tried to make the point that 90s Comics were underrated and that their elements undeservingly shunned. With that premise in mind, I am fleshing out this team with some characters that feel to me like they’d fit into those team books that were so common back then (even though I admit I haven’t read them and my artistic skills are even worse than those maligned artists of that decade). Here goes:

Kalpa

Kalpa is an elite alien soldier who originally came to Earth as an invader. Hundreds of such soldiers, modified by alien science to appear human, were sent to Earth, but when they arrived, they found a world torn asunder by supervillains, vampires, and many other threats much worse than mere alien soldiers. Many of his ilk were killed, and Kalpa learned to hate the violence he had been trained to revel in. So now he plans to bring peace to his new home the only way he knows how: through violence.

There were an awful lot of characters in the 90s who had names that were just single words that didn’t really have anything to do with them. Thanks to the Internet, I found the term from Hindu and Buddhist cosmology Kalpa which means a very long time. It works because his human form is meant to appear Indian. Otherwise, it has nothing to do with him, since his powers are all about guns and forcefields.

Bladestrike

Trained to kill by the deadliest assassins in the world, and possessing vaguely defined energy powers, Bladestrike is a perfect killing machine. She was part of a squad formed by a shadowy government cabal to take out threats from other nations. On one mission, the threat was too much and Bladestrike and her teammates were killed. Bladestrike, though, didn’t stay killed. Revived by her employers, she was told they would patch her up and get her back into the field as the new leader of the squad. But as soon as she was strong enough, Bladestrike went AWOL. During the time when she was declared dead, she had seen something that she had not told her bosses. She realized she had to change her life around, and Raid Force Zero took her in and are giving her the chance to make those changes.

Scantily clad ninja ladies are, perhaps, the most childish way comics tried to prove they were for adults. But as I think I’ve said before, scantily-clad women aren’t a bad thing in themselves, as long as it isn’t a requirement of all women in the stories, and also that there is more to the characters than just their scant claddedness. Hopefully, I could succeed at meeting my own standards here.

Thunder Thrower

When Carlton Curtis gained the power to create sonic explosions, he decided to use them to clean up the crime in his neighborhood. For years it seemed like he was doing well, but as time went on he gathered more and more enemies, supervillains who seemed to exist just to torment him. The job became too difficult for one man, so when the chance to join Raid Force One came along, it seemed like the best option.

I am picturing Thunder Thrower as a more classic superhero who was revamped into the 90s style. He started off as a symbol of hope and wonder, but then became a bitter and violent anti-hero because the former is too hard to maintain in a world like this. His loved ones were probably all killed off by villains to raise the stakes of his adventures. Note that he does not have electrical powers, he has sonic powers. But maybe he can also fly for no adequately explained reason.

The Crunch

The Crunch is actually a sentient magnetic field created by an evil mad scientist, whom the Crunch soon killed. To form a corporeal body, the Crunch gathers up hunks of scrap metal and compacts it into a super-dense form, including when necessary a magnetically-powered railgun. The Crunch considers humanity lesser beings, and was perfectly willing to kill indiscriminately until Lex Techno brought that to and end by beating the Crunch in a fight. Impressed with Lex’s skills, the Crunch is now willing to serve as a member of Raid Force One.

It may have been my imagination, but it seemed like all the terrible 90s hero teams had a Ben Grimm ripoff. Whether or not that’s true, I felt like I should get one. With his powers, he’d be able to get comically larger every time he showed up. He’d also fill the role of the Boisterous Warrior of the team, reveling in showing off and finding new challenges.

The “Supernatural Sunday” theme has been going on for more than a year now, so I think it is time to switch things up. But before we get into the next year’s theme, I will do another superfluous post of characters that aren’t even new:

Zappo

Mike Titus was a regular, ordinary young man who got caught in a science accident that gave him electricity-based superhuman powers. In Zappo’s world full of superheroes, this was not that uncommon an occurrence. It’s been known to happen. Following the examples of all the other people it happened to, he crafted a superhero persona for himself and got to fighting crime.

When I was in elementary school, I created Zappo. Drawing him at the time, his face looked like the mask he wears as I draw him now. Just inexplicable Bart Simpson-spikes on his head. I don’t know why I did it that way, but I think this mask at least makes sense of it. It would be very important to Zappo stories that he is not very powerful. A lot of superhero comics try to do stories with underdogs where the lesson seems to be “you might actually be the most powerful hero of all” and I hate that. It may go against a core tenet of superhero comics, but I don’t equate physical power with worth. Zappo would have some minor electrical powers and that’s it.

Also, we must never forget that a frog was also caught in the science accident and it also gained powers and it is now Zappo’s pet and he calls it Zap-Frog.

Clownsassin

The Clownsassin is the still-living spirit of a human who abandoned their birth-body to take on the forms of other people. Atypically for such people, when the Clownsassin takes on a new body, it immediately begins to get dressed like a clown and then go on a killing spree. Gotta have a hobby, after all.

The Clownsassin has made some cameo appearances in Secret Government Robots, including the currently running final storyline. I wouldn’t usually do a Super Sunday post for a currently-appearing character, but I wanted to talk about the origin of the Clownsassin. If it isn’t obvious from how often I mention finding information about characters in “my notes” dating back all the way to when I was in elementary school, I think up a lot of ideas but don’t follow through on stories as often as I ought. One of those things was to be “Wizard Ghosts”. They were meant to be a big part of a bunch of PDR stories, but they just sat in my head as I failed to tell those stories. And then, around 2008, the webcomic Dr. McNinja by Chris Hastings introduced Ghost Wizards (that image is from a later story). These Ghost Wizards were way cooler than my Wizard Ghosts, who were just magic users who had no permanent physical form of their own. I didn’t completely abandon the idea, Wizard Ghosts are mentioned a few times in Secret Government Robots, but I felt like I had to lessen their role. After literally years of internal debate (as I said, these things take a long time for me), I decided I can still use the ideas and just not call them Wizard Ghosts anymore. That is the term that SecGov uses for them, but they don’t call themselves that.

Muscle King Grotorr

On planet Deltoi, everyone is tough. You may think you’ve met some tough people here on Earth, but you are wrong. The Deltoids can slap rocks into dust, jump into orbit, and shrug off explosions. They are a warrior people who find all reasons to fight among each other and other reasons to attack other worlds. And strongest of them all is Grotorr. This is most fortunate, because Grotorr is a peaceful king, more likely to save other worlds from disaster than to conquer. Also, he has a gold tooth. There are Deltoids who crave violent invasions of weaker species, but Grotorr won’t allow it. After all, if those species are so weak, they wouldn’t be enjoyable to fight. Since no other species (that remains) is stupid enough to try to invade Deltoi, the only fights Grotorr gets that are worthy are would-be usurpers.

Grotorr appeared in a single Hover Head strip. I couldn’t pass up the chance to make that character into something bigger now could I? I picture Deltoid society being like the Saiyans on Dragonball. And not even what Saiyans are actually like, but what I assume they are like based on my limited knowledge. They fly around space with no ships and fight each other in world-shattering combat that takes hours.

Smoldor

Smoldor is a magical creature made from a mass of burning coal. Created by an evil pollution-loving corporation to fight CommandOak and the Forest Force. Smoldor is a strong, but dim-witted guy, but his burning touch is a formidable threat (especially to enemies made of wood) so he can’t be written off entirely. Still, most of the time he just makes stupid remarks and gets belittled by his superiors. It’s possible Smoldor might not actually be such a bad guy, he may actually just not know any better.

Good old Smoldor is just me continuing to grow the Forest Force’s resemblance to the 1980s cartoon franchises I liked as a kid. Every good villain in those days had at least one idiotic henchman. I have not actually designed any of the evil corporate people that Smoldor works for yet, but we do know that occasionally he would work alongside Mr. Slime. Also worth noting: The Forest Force are living tree people. It is my (admittedly limited) understanding that coal can be made from wood. How did the evil corporation create a living coal person? The answer may be very dark.

Evil Toe

The wizard Mak Skyruiner was a terrorist known all over the world. He and his forces sowed chaos with numerous bombing attacks on the capital city of the island kingdom Islopia. The superhuman law enforcers of Islopia (including the Beam) tracked Mak down and, in a violent climactic showdown, seemingly destroyed the wizard once and for all.

But the wizard was not entirely destroyed. A single toe remained, and was not noticed by the good guys. Having transferred enough of his essence into that solitary digit to remain conscious, the wizard used what magic power he had remaining to develop a small mechanical body to keep himself mobile. While he may now be much, much less powerful than he was, he is still alive, and where there is life, there is the opportunity for this Evil Toe to rebuild himself. And, perhaps more importantly, to cause whatever mischief he can to make things harder for the good guys.