Public Domain Super Heroes

This was the last thing I needed to find when in essay crunch mode, but when I get around to running another supers game (that's definitely when, not if), I'll be all about using it as a resource, or at least inspiration. Which reminds me, I really need to finalize my currently-unposted screed on the problems and advantages of Mutants & Masterminds.

Oh, and this guy⇨? He's the Sparkler. He can turn invisible, and when he becomes visible again, "sparks caused by the broken light rays coming together leap about his body". And, of course, all the pink. So yeah, pretty much gayer than that time I had sex with a dude.

Tuesday Character: Asim Nicostrato

"I have seen my God, millions of times. I have felt its presence every moment since my birth. It will follow me, everywhere, for the entirety of my life, for the lives of all its children now living, and it will know my death, and theirs, and go on. It is more powerful than I could ever imagine, and how is that not omnipotence? It is greater than I could ever imagine, and how is that not omnipresence? It knows more than I could ever imagine, and how is that not omniscience?"

Asim Nicostrato ("Nico" to his friends) is a well-built man with a neatly trimmed beard. He enjoys jazz, reads detective stories and is a zealous Corporatist. Corporatists worship the various megacorporations as deities, believing that the corporations have transcended whatever profit motives they may have begun with the way that humans transcended purely genetic drives, and are now guiding their human employees to greater things. Nico, a lifelong corporate citizen of TRI Interstellar, has reasonably enough chosen it as his patron, and is fervent in his belief that TRI has a plan for him.

Corporatists tend not to get promoted - their loyalty is unquestionable, but most psych evaluations mark the belief as a significant delusion, and irreligious corporate drone-types get uncomfortable around them. That Nico is the leader of a tactical squad is proof that his beliefs have in no way hindered his skills - If anything, his belief that he does the will of TRI drives him to excel. He's long since given up on trying to push his beliefs on his fellow troopers, choosing instead to lead by example. This has had mixed results - A few soldiers have taken interest in the source of Nico's calm, particularly considering the alien horrors that he regularly encounters, but the only genuine believer he managed to find died on the very next mission after his conversion. A lesser man might have had his faith shaken - the other potential converts certainly did. Nico considers it all part of TRI's plan, and soldiers on.

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Man, did I really say this was going to be a weekly series? Shows you shouldn't presume that inspiration is going to strike with any kind of regular frequency. Also, this was the result of reading far, far too many of Dark Horse's Aliens comics.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is very accurately named

So I've started reading Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and found it to be perhaps the 80s-est manga ever. The book is just wall-to-wall huge guys overemoting and blowing up heads, and I'm only midway through the second volume. That page to the right actually summarizes the story so far remarkably well - crazy mask powers, daddy issues, yelling, and straight up jamming fingers into a dude's brain. Dio Brando, a pantomime villain of the always-easy-to-write "born evil" variety, has activated an ancient blood-fueled Aztec mask that jams tentacles into his brain, killing him and turning him into a vampire in one smooth motion. Our hero, JoJo (for "Jonathan Joestar" a reasonably normal name for a book with a character named Speed Wagon), archaeologist, football star and 1st Edition paladin, who has been living with Dio's cartoonish villainy for seven years now (literally, DadJo adopted him) but unable to bring himself to save the world a lot of grief by just killing the asshole, is feverishly trying to work this out while Dio runs around draining cop's life essences by fingering their frontal lobes. Whatta feeb; Dio's a raging, dad-poisoning, dog-killing hardon, but at least he gets shit done.

Are there valuable, gameable ideas to be gleaned from all this nonsense? Perhaps. If not, hey. an awful lot of guys are going to get their heads karate-chopped in half, and that's always an entertainment bargain.