Well, we're down to the last week of the patronage project. The project has been funded by 11 awesome patrons, but there's still room for more if you want to get in on it. Silver Age patronage can be had for $10 and gets you your name in the final book as a Silver Age Patron and a special e-book containing golden age comics and a preview illustration from the final book along with a hand-written note of thanks. Golden Age patronage is $20 and gets you the above, plus your name included in the mini-setting in the game book and you get to vote on which heroes are illustrated for the book. Remember, the final product will be a free, open content PDF and a print-on-demand book sold as cheaply as possible. It will include old school rules for comic book hero adventures - character generation, fighting rules, dozens of super powers and a mini-setting and introductory adventure. The patronage project is to purchase some kick ass artwork.
When the time limit is up for the project (Oct 12), I'll be sending ballots to all Golden Age patrons to vote on which heroes are to be illustrated by Joel Carroll (that's his work on top of the post). Once the votes are cast and the patronage money drops into my account, I'll make the official commission and get this ball rolling! When the heroes are drawn, I'll send out the patronage packages to everybody.
So far, we've covered the ubermenschen, elementals, tough guys, patriotic and occult heroes. Today we look at the Science Heroes. Science Heroes are those who get their powers through scientific gadgets and the like.
The King of Darkness is radio engineer Bruce King, who stumbles upon a way to use radio waves to create beams of cold and beams of darkness, as well as an anti-gravity wave for good measure.
The Masked Marvel - identity unknown. Headquarters - glass-domed mountain headquarters. Operatives - ZL, ZR and ZY. Gadgets - zepplin, telepathically-controlled plane, paralyzation ray gun and a televisor that allows him to see everywhere in the world. He can also lift dinosaurs over his head, so he has that to fall back on when he runs out of batteries.
Sandra Knight, daughter of a senator, fights crime with a blacklight ray (no, not for looking at groovy posters) that creates darkness and makes her invisible. And yes, if she gets the nod her name will have to be changed to avoid trademark entanglements.
When Shannon Kane's chemist husband Harry is killed by agents of a foreign government, she takes his formula for "spider-web glue" and becomes a heroine. She uses bracelets to fire the substance, which is even strong enough to swing on! I can't imagine why somebody didn't recycle such a novel idea and make a fortune with it.
Yes, Fletcher Hanks rears his head once again (see Fantomah of the occult heroes). Stardust the Super Wizard lives on a private star (the air conditioning bills are murder) and travels about fighting crime using "tubular spatial accelerated supersolar light waves" and repulsor and attraction rays. He's very big in the ray business.
Some wonderfully wacky choices, but I'm leaning towards Stardust because of his delightful technobabble powers!
ReplyDeleteSpider Queen? Seriously? Call her hideout the Demonweb Pits and you got yourself a friggin' crossover!
ReplyDeleteNothing beats technobabble - just ask the crew of the Enterprise-D
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