Yorgok

Yorgok is a traveller from another dimension. A ten foot tall, monster-lookin’ guy, he wandered onto Earth one day through some kind of swirly portal that appeared in the air. Though his mission is purely one of exploration, he does not consider the living things on Earth to be his equal, so he treats us as we would treat ants. Armed with a super-powerful raygun, Yorgok goes about all manner of scientific surveys of the planet, happy to kill any humans who come too close.

I fully admit that the primary creative factor of this character is that I noticed that I hadn’t done a Super Sunday character that started with the letter Y. At the time of sketching, I didn’t feel like just making someone who was called “The Yellow Werewolf” or something easy like that, but apparently I was fine making up a gibberish name. Also, I am a fan of rayguns, so I threw one of those into the mix.

Seems like a cold-blooded alien scientist might be a good villain for a robot with a personality, like the Robotomaton.

The Verman

The Verman is a humanoid rat guy with a penchant for murder. As one might expect, he spends a lot of time hiding in sewers and other dark areas, only coming out to strike. The Verman seems to be of human-level intelligence, but makes no effort to communicate with humanity, so his origins and desires remain a mystery. He wears armor and uses weapons, but how he got them is unclear. The only thing anyone knows for sure about the Verman is this: he is dangerous.

The superhero Club Man was an exterminator in Ogretropolis, so he is perhaps the ideal opponent for this humanoid rat guy. A tough, but kinda dumb human versus tough, and unusually intelligent vermin.

I have enough villains sketched and colored to get me all the way through what remains of Supervillain Sunday year! Let’s get going:

Axkiller McGee

There is a group called the Weird Assassins. When a young girl discovered she had the ability to make any kind of ax, from battleaxes to hatchets, appear in her hand at will, she knew she could find a way to make that into a life. Luckily a love of money and a belief that human lives were not worth all that much meant that she could find work among the Weird Assassins, being hired to take on the strangest assassin cases in the business. Unlike many of the Weird Assassins, Axkiller McGee enjoys being a bit theatrical and will try to make her hits in as public a forum as she can while still expecting to get away. That kind of risk-taking has made her a frequent combatant against superheroes, which would normally be a no-no for an assassin, but her success rate means she is still able to find work.

I admit, after I drew this character it took me forever to come up with a name. Once I wrote down “Axkiller McGee” I knew I needed to take a break for a while. So I did. Anyway, I said when I made Killercat that I would probably do more Weird Assassins, and I knew this was a sketch that would fit into that loose-knit collection of killers for hire.

Hypnogre

The portal between Ogretropolis and this strange world called “Earth” is too small for an ogre to get through. But humans seem to be the perfect size for such dimensional travels. Hypnogre is an ogre hypnotist who has taken to controlling the minds of humans and forcing them to do his bidding, smuggling things to and from Earth to create a thriving criminal trade empire.

Full disclosure: Marq came up with the name “Hypnogre” after I complained to him that all the “best” ogre names (ie. Electrogre, Technogre, Necrogre, etc.) were all taken according to Google. The fact that an ogre hypnotist fit so well within my existing creations just proved it was meant to be.

Hurtch

Hurtch is your typical Fifth-Dimensional Ogre. He’s just angry all the time and wants to beat the heck out of people. Luckily for him, he knows how to get to that puny Three-Dimensional world called Earth. In the Third Dimension, Hurtch is so powerful that he would Blow Your Mind! Unfortunately for Hurtch, Volcanocles is hanging around on that Earth planet. And Volcanocles isn’t going to let Ming Blowing Power stop him.

The idea for a Fifth-Dimensional Ogre is something that’s been rolling around in my head for a while, a reaction to the Mr. Mxyzptlk, Superman’s Fifth-Dimensional Imp. But, where Mxy gives Superman an opponent to fight with his mind, Hurtch and Volcanocles are just all about the punching each other. Because that’s the kind of guys they are.

The Larcener

The world’s cleverest thief. The Larcener is a mysterious criminal. He seems to work for himself, never taking jobs for hire, but he also targets items that are too unique to ever be fenced without getting noticed. Perhaps he is amassing some collection or the world’s most valuable knickknacks, or perhaps he is more interested in the act of thievery than the personal gains, but nobody can say for sure. The Larcener has never been captured and nobody has even heard his voice.

With all the tricks you might expect from a master thief (smoke grenades, suction cups, grappling hooks, laser cutters, etc.) the Larcener has broken into Billionaires’ mansions, top-secret military bases, an ancient temples, leaving only a monogrammed calling card with a monogrammed “L” is left behind to taunt the victims.

Allow me to paraphrase my thought process in creating the Larcener: “I should make a thief-lookin’ guy.” That was followed by “I wonder if there’s an old-fashioned word for a thiefy dude.” I turns out there was. The Larcener would work as a foil for Securitaur. I envision the Larcener being the One Who Gets Away, the enemy that Securitaur and company come up against again and again, but can never seem to capture. Maybe they foil his crimes from time to time, but he always gets away. Maybe Securitaur successfully repels the ninjas, then turns around to find the loot that he’d been hired to protect has vanished.

Club Man

Conrad was a young construction worker who fell off a roof, but the ground he hit wasn’t the pavement below. Somehow, Conrad fell into a dimensional tear leading to Ogretropolis, a city for ogres. With no way to return home, Conrad had to fend for himself in that strange town, eventually finding a job as an exterminator (his relatively small size helped him get into areas the big ogres couldn’t and he fight the dog-sized insectoid pests). When he had made enough money, Conrad was finally able to pay a magician to send him home. Back on Earth, Conrad realized he had grown stronger and his enchanted club was more powerful than most Earth-material. With these advantages, it was easy for Club Man to continue cleaning up pests, but this time it is the criminal variety that is on the receiving end of his wallopings.

I’ve always been drawn to big dumb good guy characters. There’s something I relate to in the fellow who is strong and stupid as an ox, but it still a decent guy. I feel like that character was all over the place in my youth, but is less common now. I’m not at all surprised by the conventional “twist” on the trope by having the big guy also be smart, that happens all the time now, so I just wanted to harken back to the lovable dumb strong guy.

Wizardog

Who is a good dog? Wizardog is! Yes he is!

With mystic powers passed down from the ages, Wizardog protects mankind from various threats and creatures from Realms Beyond. Intelligent enough to communicate with humans, Wizardog doesn’t bother, with the exception of little Maggie Bronson, his owner. Wizardog wages his war in secret, expecting nothing in return, except a scratch behind the ears at the end of the day.

Super Animals are one of those elements of superhero comics that some people don’t like. As with all the other weird stuff I’ve mentioned over the course of this year, I think super animals can be done well. I won’t be happy until we get Krypto in a Superman movie. It’s a shame Hollywood hates me so much. (It’s not a superhero comic, but an excellent example of pets fighting supernatural stuff would be Beasts of Burden. Read that thing.)