I continue my sketching villains for the hero I created in Junior High:

Fire Queen

The Fire Queen is Janet Faulker, the matriarch of a powerful family of supervillains. The ability to create and control flames has been in her family family, which has made it easy to make a fortune as arsonists, saboteurs, enforcers and assassins. In time, this family became the top crime family not only in their home country of New Zealand, but throughout much of the Southern Hemisphere. But now, the family has a problem. One of Janet’s daughters, Jessica, has gone against the family. Now calling herself “Combustion” Jessica has become a superhero, fighting not only crime in America, but also against her flame-slinging family back home. Janet does not hate her daughter, she does not want to kill her, but sometimes a mother has to do something she doesn’t want to do, for the good of the rest of her family. Janet can’t let one upstart child ruin all the hard work her parents and grandparents had put into their lives. Janet can’t let one runaway tear down everything that should provide for the other children and grandchildren. Janet has to kill Combustion and as many of her superhero friends as it takes.

I had mentioned the Fire Queen in my childhood notes, but never did a sketch. I basically went with a woman with even more fire than Combustion had. With a goal that simple, I feel I was successful.

Grimface

Justice-Man was given by an unknown organization, designed to be an ultimate assassin. While he was freed by the good guys and chose a life of crime-fighting, there were other children used as weapons by the unknown organization. When Justice-Man and his allies finally did stop the organization, many of their operatives were in the field and had nowhere to go.

Grimface has no memory of his childhood. As far as he knows, he has always been as he is now. His cyborg enhancements made him an ideal assassin of superhuman targets, but now he is on his own. He has learned enough to blend in. He poses as a homeless man and lives on the streets in plain sight, but where nobody looks. But he always carries a bag with him, in which he keeps a strange mask. When he wants something, he wears the mask, and there are few who can stop him from getting what he wants.

Unlike all the other villains this month, Grimface was not something I dug up in my notes. Sure I have dozens of other Justice-Man villains among those notes that I could easily have thrown in here, but I figure that if my imaginary character has continued having imaginary adventures since my junior high years, he has probably made some new enemies in that time. (Besides, Super Sunday is supposed to be about me creating new things, so next week we get back to that.)

I will now continue my month-long look at supervillains I created for the Justice-Man character when I was little:

Smash Man

An expert in super-genetic sciences, Rich Rogers originally made a name for himself as a supercriminal by enhancing himself so that he could throw glowing punches strong enough to shatter stone. With these powers he did the usual thing: bank robberies and superhero fights, but eventually he wound up in prison.

But the Chopper broke him out and put him in charge of the science division of his massive criminal empire. With nearly unlimited resources at his command, Smash Man now routinely makes clones and strange monsters, as well as giving superhuman abilities to those who can afford it. He is one of the Chopper’s most loyal agents, so much so that he is considered by some to be second-in-command, though Chopper is not willing to officially give that role to anyone. This has caused tension among some of the other potential seconds in command (including one of Chopper’s sons), but so everyone is too scared of Chopper to risk being upfront about these issues.

I assume that, as a child, I thought I was being very clever by making a guy called something like “Smash Man” a brilliant scientist. Also, there was definitely my standard “glowing hands to avoid drawing hands” thing in play here.

Sally “Chainsaw” McQueen

Sally McQueen, unlike the majority of old people, is handy with a chainsaw. Also, she’s a mass murderer. For decades this old lady lured or kidnapped or stalked people and tortured them to death. Any investigators who came close to discovering her identity would wind up dead, including a police tactics units who raided her home and were slaughtered by a variety of traps. It was not until Justice-Man took an interest in the case that the murderous career of Chainsaw McQueen came to an end.

I’ve been mostly drawing my Justice-Man characters as if they were fifteen years older than they were when I created them, but McQueen was already elderly back then. If I got to tell stories of Justice-Man, I’d have to assume she was an early enemy of Justice-Man and has probably since died in prison. Oh well!

Champion of Doom

The Greater Toronto Area is basically gone. Too many robots, monsters, and supervillains over too long a time, and the city could not last. That part of Canada now resembles a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with roving gangs and mutant troublemakers. The Champion of Doom, having proven himself among the toughest of this hellscape’s denizens, is the leader of an especially violent biker gang. Often lending his services to criminals outside of the Toronto Wasteland, for things like smuggling or human trafficking, the Champion of Doom and his servants frequently come into conflict with Justice-Man and his allies.

The idea that Toronto is destroyed by all the supervillain activity in Toronto led to its destruction was not originally part of my Junior-High-Era notes, but things like the surviving Justice-Man comic, in which young PDR wrote “an estimated 90 000 000 dollars” of damage is done to the city, kinda led me down that road. It presents some story possibilities that I think would be interesting to explore.

K-Roy

K-Roy was an early creation of Dr. Blade. One of only a few dozen robotic intelligences the villain created before he left the Earth altogether to found an orbital city. Before leaving the planet, K-Roy and the other intelligent machine soldiers fought against superheroes in various world conquest plots, but in space Dr. Blade’s robot army has grown sedentary. They prevent any human exploration of space, but apart from the occasional hit and run raid, they have been content to simply live in their city much like the humans do below, as ordinary civilians. K-Roy himself has made a space for himself as a philosopher and educator of other new intelligences.

K-Roy himself is not all that important a robot. He’s just one of an army of hundreds, maybe thousands, created by the mad scientist Dr. Blade. Since my goal on Super Sundays is to create sketches of characters who have not appeared elsewhere, I could not use Dr. Blade himself. He has shown up in the old Justice-Man comic, as well as one Little Choy. So, I found a robot among my notes and used him as an example of Blade’s greater army. Other Dr. Blade robots have been seen Hanging out in space and another was also a Little Choy victim.

The orbital robot city of Dr. Blade would function in stories as one of those fantastic locations that heroes have to visit from time to time. Still, as Dr. Blade gets older, he could perhaps find his desire to rule the world more urgent and he could be a significant thorn in Justice-Man’s side once more.

Some surprise hours at work mean I’m running late on this Super Sunday, but who cares right?

Last year, during the Superhero Sundays, I spend July doing the supporting cast of my Justice-Man character. This year, I’ll do some of his villains.

The Chopper

The Chopper is Justice-Man’s arch-nemesis and he’s the most feared man on the Earth. Samuel O’Hara inherited powers from his father: He can generate blades of telekinetic force from his forearms that can cut through pretty much anything. That’s neat and all, but it isn’t a power that would alone make someone the most dangerous in a world full of superhumans, but O’Hara makes up for that by being a ruthless and cunning criminal mastermind. O’Hara started as a serial killer in his teens. Eventually he was caught, but his powers caught the notice of a mysterious unknown organization. Freeing the Chopper to use him as a field agent, and later as an instructor for other agents, the organization gave O’Hara the time and freedom he needed to sow the seeds he would later use to build a criminal empire. This same organization would later use a teenage boy as a weapon, the same boy who would become Justice-Man, but by then the Chopper was on his own.

Now, decades later, Chopper’s biggest asset is his ruthlessness. He runs an international organization that includes armies of robots and cyborgs all completely loyal to their brutal master, but law enforcement agencies, and even superheroes, are reluctant to work against him. Chopper’s powerful army keeps other, potentially worse villainous groups from gaining a stronger footing, and any good guy who does try to oppose them is met with swift retaliation against friends and family. Only Justice-Man is willing to do anything against O’Hara and even the other heroes tend to think he is riling up a force he shouldn’t.

Powersaw

Powersaw was once a woman who just happened to find some sort of magical unbreakable saw that seemed to be able to cut through anything. Using this as a mercenary, the woman took the name Powersaw. As time went on, she had the blade cybernetically attached to her arm, and since then has been replacing more and more of her person with cybernetics. She’s not worried about losing her humanity, though. After all, a person who discovers a magic saw blade and her first instinct is to use it as a mercenary isn’t all that high on humanity to begin with. Justice-Man encounters a lot of superhuman mercenaries in his career and Powersaw is one of the toughest.

It was not intentional that I scheduled two villains who could cut through anything today, but I don’t care. Deal with it.

In the dystopian world of Universe Red, there are a multitude of evil governments. One of these, based in Europe, is an extreme right-wing group that holds on to power with an army of superhuman agents. They are:

The New Leader

Manfred Feigenbaum is the masked leader of the Nuclear Nazis. Though he began his career as a relatively normal, and relatively unsuccessful, politician, some radioactive accident has transformed him. It is rumored that beneath his mask he is deformed, though that rumor is false. The accident, rather than marring Feigenbaum, has improved him, has made him superhuman. He now feels that the masses are undeserving of seeing his visage. Having not aged in the two decades since his accident, the New Leader of the Nazi party feels confident that he can play the long game and guide the world toward a glorious new Reich.

Tanksolder

Willie Andrews, Jr is an American. Raised in an impoverished town, Willie was in and out of prison for years and found his place among a white supremacist group. When the Nuclear Nazis came to power in Europe they put out an announcement that they would accept white immigrants who wanted to join them. Once there, Willie applied to the army and was accepted to the superhuman agents program. Given superhuman strength and a suit of armor with guns and stuff, he became the Tanksoldier.

Stormstriker

Jean-Francois Venner is a French teenager who ran away from home to join the Nuclear Nazis, wanting to get on to what he considered the likely winners of the war in Europe. Also a graduate of the superhuman agent training, Jean-Francois has the ability to fly and shoot bursts of electricity. His brother has since become a prominent solder for an opposing government, also with super powers.

Overtrooper

The identity of the Overtrooper is unknown. He is touted as an example of the ideal soldier, and indeed he is a force on the battlefield, but he has never spoken in public. It is almost as if he has no personality at all beyond his role as solder. Which is, perhaps, the ideal solder after all.

Okay, notes: Nazis and superhero comics have been together a long time. It makes sense considering the Golden Age of superhero comics was almost exactly coincides with the Second World War. And, to make it that much easier, the Nazis come as close to supervillains as you can get in the real world. They have their recognizable uniforms and ideals that can pretty much only be seen as evil.

Still, I kinda want to see less of the Nazis in superhero comics. It’s overdone. I mean, my favorite villain in superhero comics is a Nazi (well, when written well the Red Skull will use any ethos to further his evil ends, but most often that is Nazism). But in cases like Captain America, having the villains he fought in the war still be active today makes it seem like the heroes haven’t accomplished a damn thing. In any case, the Nuclear Nazis here would be a Neo-Nazi group with no members dating back to the original Nazi party.

I inked these guys after the pen I liked best ran out of ink. I’m not really happy with the way they turned out with the very thin pen I used. But who cares, really? Also, all four were taken from old Junior High-era PDR sketches, which means that though I see some similarities between Overtrooper and the Winter Solder, my design came from the era before either the movie or Bucky’s return to the comics, so I don’t have to feel bad about it.

Finally: in the Europe of Universe Red I have also established the character Killshadow. Something could be done with that.