Various things of great galactic importance keep happening to the small crew of a quarantine station in the Epabrian Galactic Empire.

Calvin Brooks

Calvin always wanted to be the captain of an Epabrian Starship. After decades of hard work, he is now in command of the Quarantine Station #347, a job which is not at all equal to the rank of captain. It’s closer to sergeant, but without the respect of those below him. The station’s purpose is to quarantine the ships and the crews of those passing into Epabrian space, which does get Calvin close to those with real political power, and he can’t quite stop himself from trying to manipulate things in ways that he think will raise his esteem, but which always seem fail.

Kelly Durnwell

Second in command on the station is Kelly Durnwell, who joined the Epabrian military for the medical plan and is happy to not be doing anything harder than she is. Her one and only goal is to get through her career to the retirement age without anything going wrong, so she always gets a little nervous about Calvin’s plans, but he can easily manipulate her with bonuses and vacation time.

Viderin Nont

The Epabrian Empire is a human civilization, but they have citizens from other species in there as well. Viderin is Owds Person, a refugee from a planet ruled by a despot. Viderin has customs that are different from humanity’s, and she doesn’t correctly understand human customs, and therefore she’s the stations resident Wacky Foreigner.

Zhick Naya

Zhick, unlike Viderin, is indeed a human. There is a planet in the Epabrian Empire in which humans have evolved blue skin. Zhick got assigned to the 347 after he pissed off his captain on the Starship where he was first assigned. He joined up to get away from a bad relationship and has no loyalty to the Empire. He’s correctly noted that the rest of the crew is more than enough to keep things running smoothly, so he shovels whatever work he is assigned onto Viderin and spends his time pulling cons on passers-through.

Roberick XB

Roberick XB is the kind of representative of foreign powers that often pass through the quarantine station. The head of a Robot Shipping Lines vessel, Roberick comes through 347 every month or two and is a source of gossip (usually lies), and of smuggled goods (cheap and sometime stolen).

The Epabrian Empire was first seen in a little comic I did called Starship Renewal and I felt like it was time to go back to that well.

One of the big influences here is Red Dwarf, obviously, but there are many other sci-fi sitcoms that have not lasted as long. This would be one of those.

Cosmic Chief

Hundreds of years ago, a strange otherworldly energy burst into a small village from some other dimension. A handful of people were exposed, and were mutated into cosmically powerful new forms. One of those individuals was particularly cruel and fought among the others, but was eventually driven away to outer space. There, he became known as the Cosmic Chief, making an alien army, and after a century finally returned to Earth to find it populated by all manner of superheroes and villains. He immediately resumed fighting.

This one is another design and story from when I was a kid. The idea was that the strange energy was the source of most of the powers in that universe (what I now call Universe Orange). After that original group was exposed, their powers spread. Anyone present when one of these beings was killed would gain be exposed to their energies, gaining some diluted form of their own powers. And any offspring of those people would inherit them. Furthermore, in the stories I plotted back then, the Cosmic Chief was killed and one of his hands, referred to as the Cosmic Fist, was detached and could be worn by others, giving them great power. Pretty much an Infinity Gauntlet ripoff, if on a lesser scale. Plus, it’s an actual guy’s fist.

Pain Guy

Like the Wine Taster, the Pain Guy is an Unsettling Oddity, which means it is his goal to just freak people out. While the Wine Taster preys on social situational anxiety, the Pain Guy takes a decidedly more visceral tack. Imagine being alone on a dark street, when a scantily clad man runs around a corner, sprints straight toward you, and starts hurting himself. He throws himself on the ground or against walls, drives nails into his flesh, or even stabs himself with a knife. His screams and moans are terrible, when he isn’t actively damaging his own voicebox. After a few moments of this, that would surely feel much longer, he would crawl or limp away.

I bet you’d find that pretty freaky and confusing, wouldn’t you? Well then you’re just the kind of sap the Pain Guy wants to visit.

For the record, that’s supposed to be barbed wire wrapped around Pain Guy’s limbs, not Frankenstein stitching.

The Hateful King

The one now known as the Hateful King was conceived during a tryst between an immortal magic user and a demon meeting in a spiritual plane. The future King’s mother was a messenger demon, a go-between between earthly wizards and a powerful demon, the Fear Fomenter. Born and raised in the demon realm, he was put into service of the Fear Fomenter, fighting against other demons who tried to muscle in on his turf, though the other demons mocked him for his partial corporeality. In his thirtieth year, the Fear Fomenter traded him to a human wizard. He was on Earth for the first time as a slave and being forced to build a castle alone, by hand. Doing this, he grew strong, and watching his master, he learned magic. After years of slavery, he was powerful enough to overthrow his wizard master. And after that he opened a rift to the demon realm and killed the Fear Fomenter. Claiming the castle as his own, the Hateful King now had an army made up of the remnants of the wizard’s goblin hordes and a fear demon mob. He looked at the world around him and decided, he would take it for his own.

The sharp-eyed among you may notice that this guy is in color. I’ve been toying with coloring some of my previous Super Sunday sketched and, while I don’t know how to make it look less messy, some of the results please me. I guess from time to time when I feel like it, I’ll throw a color sketch up on here. Why did this guy deserve to be the first with color? Well, as of this writing, I think there is no story I’d rather be writing than the story of the war against the Hateful King. If I had an artist who wanted to work with me, this is the first idea I’d pitch right now.

Zglarxon

A walking mass of space matter that resembles a color-inverted starry sky, Zglarxon is not from around here. Spawned in some anomaly deep in space, Zglarxon has come to Earth with an apparent mission, though its nature is not understandable to us mere mortals. Often it appears to steal rare elements and using them in constructing strange machinery, often in places that cause trouble for humanity (it seems to prefer building its structures on city streets). If it completes its machine, it will often leave. If the machine’s operation is impeded, it will attack.

Given the “inverted starry sky” description I gave above, Zglarxon is practically colored as well. Hooray. As a mysterious space-thing with unknowable motives, Zglarxon is a counterpart of the Orbzoid. What makes Zglarxon a bad guy and Orbzoid a good guy? The Orbzoid seems to help people on occasion, but Zglarxon barely notices their presence, uncaring as it causes harm to achieve whatever it is trying to achieve. And if someone stands between Zglarxon and his goals, Zglarxon will become extremely violent.

VILLAINS!

Lord Terryr

Lord Terryr watches the Earth from his castle on his asteroid. Master of the Army of Horroriors, Terryr wants nothing more than to sow chaos among humankind and create fear. His ultimate goal? Nothing more than the ultimate downfall of society on Earth, to scare humanity back to the stone age, leaving on only a superstitious, easily controlled population behind.

Using a machine called the Mind-Miner, Terryr can probe the nightmares of those sleeping on the world below, and from these he can breed his Horroriors, a warrior race of terrible monsters. These monsters he then sends to Earth, alone or in groups, to attack at random. Generally Lord Terryr will break into the Earth’s communication systems to mock humanity and make sure they know: “You are not safe.”

I don’t have much to say about Lord Terryr here. I mostly just wanted to draw a weird looking villain who would rule an army of monsters. I admit I’ve not seen a lot of Power Rangers, but the idea of sending monsters down to Earth is something I know they had, but here those monsters are only there to cause fear, not to conquer the world or whatever. This seems more feasible. It was not intentional, but given that I’ve made him into a fearmonger who exists in space, I think he’d be an ideal enemy for Valia, the space god of courage. Natural enemies.

Gunfire

Wielding two custom-made shotguns, the woman called Gunfire is one of the highest paid assassins in the world. Homeless as a teenager, the woman who would become Gunfire had to turn to crime. It turned out she was very good at it. Starting as a heister, she pissed off some organized crime types when she robbed a store under their protection. When they came after her, she was able to turn the tables and brought the whole operation down. When a new syndicate moved in to fill the void, Gunfire’s reputation was more than enough to get her a job as a trigger person. Since then, her career has only gone up.

As I did several times during the hero portion of Super Sunday, I’m going to be trying to stick women into roles typically filled by men. There are indeed lady assassins in comics, but they are generally sexified ninja sorts. I’m not going to say there aren’t unsexified female assassins in comics, I just think it wouldn’t hurt to have another one. I had not intended to assign every villain I make this year to a hero I’d made in the previous year, but since I did it above, I’ll tie Gunfire here to the crime-fighting careers of Rhinoceros Woman and Rabbit.

Valia

Valia of the Astrolympians is the space god of courage. Great and powerful, she appears on Earth to help the downtrodden in their time of need and to make the oppressed capable of challenging tyrants. Long ago, Valia’s father, the Great Genitor, fought against his ancient brothers, the Emptinesses, for the sake of the universe. Genitor was wounded, he slumped over and his blood pooled around him. Genitor felt defeated until, rising from his blood, Valia appeared to aid him in his fight. Together, father and daughter were powerful enough to banish the Emptinesses to the Outer Places. Genitor now had space in which creation could occur.

You can’t really tell in my drawing, but Valia would have the facial appearance of a black woman. Generally, if a cosmic being in comics has a humanoid appearance with a human skin tone, they look white. Why continue that trend? Anyway, if I told stories of Valia, I’d try to find some balance between old school mythological, gods who appear and inspire mortals (by posing as humans and such) and comic style gods, who fight everything always.

Cephalophore

Though beheaded, Miriam Dunville is not dead. She can not only walk and talk as well as ever, she’s actually stronger, faster, and more agile than she ever had been before. Though Miriam has no idea how she managed to survive, or how she still does, she has decided that her continued existence is a miracle and, as such, she must do everything in her power to deserve that miracle. In addition to attempting to solve the attempted murder that left her like this, Miriam takes the time to help any and all she sees in need.

It is, to put it slightly, not easy to fight crime while holding your own head. Luckily for Miriam, she is able to swing herself by her hair or throw her head at criminals with either feeling pain or taking damage.

This is the second, at least, superhero I’ve created who rams their face into opponents. What is that about, PDR?