Super Sunday: Captain Krakk and the Propheseer

Captain Krakk

When Dr. Malevolence was defeated by her superhero enemies for the umpteenth time, her teleportation technology went haywire and sent her spiraling through various dimensions. Just barely managing to save herself, Malevolence found herself stranded in a strange dimension populated by crustaceoid beings that were apparently as intelligent as humans. Arbitrarily, she picked one of these beings and offered him the benefit of her technology if he would serve her. And serve her he did. This crab-like man, named Krakk, became Malevolence’s loyal military leader, helping her raise an army to conquer not only that world, but to bring back to Earth with her once she was able.

Now Malevolence is home again, but she maintains a interdimensional portal in her secret laboratory. Captain Krakk is in charge of things on his world, living in a palace built by the strange Earth technology and using his army to keep the rest of the populace as slaves. While he must occasionally quell uprising of his people, he is also summoned to Earth to aid his benefactor in her times of need.

I wanted to draw some kind of lobstery guy, so I did. I think I was at least partially inspired by General Traag, the leader of Krang’s rock soldiers from Dimension X on the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, so I tried to create a similar-feeling for Krakk’s backstory.

Propheseer

An old man with a big book. Where the Propheseer received his book is not known, but it seems to contain factual depictions of future events. The bad news is, the book describes dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of disasters that will befall the human race. The good news is, it ends with the wounded remains of humanity recovering and forming a new and better society. That future ideal world is the Propheseer’s motivation. To bring that happy place into existence, he has to make certain that the disasters happen. But since the Noblewoman came onto the scene, disasters are having a harder time wiping out humanity.

Is there any hope for the human race? Would we be better off just wiping the slate clean and starting over? I’ve known people who are down on the world and have said that. But I consider that a defeatist attitude. My superheroes would be about making the world a better place through hard work, not giving up and trying anew. I’ve already given Noblewoman a few villains this year, but she seemed a good fit for this concept, so she gets another.

Super Sunday: The Network City Bastards

The Network City Bastards

Network City, corrupt as it is, is a place of rules and order. With cybernetic police soldiers patrolling the streets and every corner of the city watched by cameras, rebellion is hard to do. So those who do rebel have to rebel hard:

Augmentor

Network City is the world’s technology leader, so with his exceptional hacking skills (using augmented reality goggles and “hacking guns” of course), Augmentor is right at home. He is the leader of the group, inasmuch as they have a leader, and he is also responsible for their ability to escape the omnipresent cameras and police databases. He probably pretends like he is fighting against the fascist pigs who run the city, but that’s just an excuse to do whatever he wants.

Antipathi

Antipathi has nanotechnology coursing through her veins, keeping her muscles and bones superhumanly strong and making her quick and agile. She also has a general hatred for humanity coursing through her mind. Her alliance with the Bastards is mostly just a convenient means for her to punch stuff and hurt people. She’s good at it too.

Exoskeleto

A cybernetics genius with a bad attitude, this teenage troublemaker wears a powerful cyber suit that makes him a physical rival of even the strongest cyborg police officers in the city. And he is always ready to prove himself in a fight. Exoskeleto’s favorite activity is showing off just how powerful he is. That can sometimes lead to problems when the rest of the team is trying to be subtle and Exoskeleto is aching for a fight.

Spikethrower

Spikethrower throws spikes. She has cybernetic devices in her bones that, in addition to giving her an unnatural jumping ability, also produces metal spikes that “grow” out of her back. When you’ve got spikes, might as well throw them, right?

These four characters: I had not drawn them with any connection in mind, but I figured that grouping them together would move us along more quickly. It does also help me fill one niche: This is less true than it was when I was young, but teenaged villains were once not particularly common. For the longest time it seemed that teenagers would be the super heroes and they’d fight adult criminals (starting with Spider-Man, I guess). I suppose this was about appealing to the target audience, youths, but c’mon… we all know that actual teens are jerks. Let’s let them be super-jerks. (“Prove me wrong, kids! Prove me wrong!”)

Super Sunday: Scarecrow and Agent Chrysanthemum

Scarecrow

Suppose you find yourself in a rural community where everyone acts slightly strange. They all act nice enough, but they’re nervous, fidgety. The staff at the diner give you your meal in record time and try usher you out of town as quick as possible. You suspect they are hiding something, so after dark you sneak back into town. You find a crowd gathered around a scarecrow in what appears to be an ordinary field. Then you realize that the scarecrow is speaking. It is giving a speech to be precise. It promises the townsfolk that their time is coming. Soon the world will be theirs. Soon, everyone else will pay. The scarecrow’s eyes glow and so too do the townsfolk. It sounds crazy, but you learn that the scarecrow houses the spirit of an alien dictator, and it is filling the population of the small town with superhuman energies, making them into an army to conquer the Earth. Then you stumble and make a noise. The townsfolk look your way. Before you can blink, the mob of of them are on you. The scarecrow laughs maniacally as you lose consciousness. You awaken just as you are being strapped into a machine. The townsfolk tell you that you will soon be joining them.

Both Marvel and DC have villains named Scarecrow (the latter, being a Batman villain, is more widely known). Clearly the name is generic enough and anyone can use it, so I did. I went an entirely different way with it, though.

Agent Chrysanthemum

The “Flower Girls” were once the ultimate team of assassins. Agents Rose, Daisy, Tulip, Carnation, Lily, and Chrysanthemum were an unstoppable cyborg force, until they were stopped. Their rivals joined forces to bring the Girls down, and the result was a bloody war. Ultimately, only Chrysanthemum survived. Of her team, and of the rivals.

All alone, but still a killer cyborg, and now the best that the market had to offer, Agent Chrysanthemum continues to take on missions of espionage and assassination.

I drew a cyborg and had no idea what to do with her. This will have to do. I suspect I’ve probably done a few too many villains-for-hire over the course of my Supervillain year, but hey, what can I say? That’s the sort of thing that strikes me as most villainous. Batman can pick on people with mental disabilities all he wants, it is the people who willingly do bad things for their own profit that I don’t like. Still, hopefully I don’t have a lot more of it in the time remaining.

Super Sunday: Mr. Badtimes and Wyverna

Mr. Badtimes

Five-year old Joey Cavichi has quite an imagination. It just so happens that whatever he draws can come into the real world. Now, when Joey drew a person, the person that came into the real world was not alive. But Joey realized he could wear this drawing like it was a suit of armor, and within he could control it. From within, he found he was superhumanly fast and strong. It was like riding a grownup-sized mech. Joey realized, with this, he could do whatever he wanted, and nobody would know to blame him.

The usual example of a child with creepy imagination powers has a kid who can just will things into existence or whatever. That’s all well and good, but I decided to go a different way with it, so that the kid can get into actual fistfights with superheroes. Fistfights are an important part of superhero comics after all.

Wyverna

Like her ancestors, Anna Laughlin can summon forth the spirit of the mythical Wyvern. Creating pseudophysical manifestations of wings, claws, a tail, et cetera, Anna can fly, slash through stone, and so on. While many of her ancestors had used the powers sparingly (because they can be detrimental to the user’s health), and generally for good (including in the World Wars), Anna has become Wyverna, a full-on supervillain. Why have superhuman powers if you aren’t using them for your own good, right? Her criminal career has led to her tangling with another person whose powers run in their family, the Flying Falchion.

It was difficult, while coloring this character, not to make her look like the Welsh flag. Also, I don’t know much about the Wyvern of folklore and I didn’t do any research for this character. I mean, if I ever actually used her in a story, I’d do so, but for now I’m content not knowing a thing.

Super Sunday: Axkiller McGee and Hypnogre

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.