Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Making up Marvel characters

One of my favorite things about the Young Avengers, when they showed up, is the fake out / bait and switch nature of them perceived legacies versus their real legacies.

On the cover, there's a kid in dark blue with a red cape and a fancy headpiece, flying and throwing lightning from a stick in his hand, named Asgardian. Obvious Thor legacy. And, wrong. He's a Scarlet Witch legacy!

Big musclebound green dude named Hulkling. Obvious Hulk legacy, and, wrong again, he's a Captain Mar-Vell legacy!

Iron Lad, in a suit of silver and red Iron Man armor? Nothing to do with Stark. He's friggin' Kang the Conqueror!

I found that inspiring, so I wanted to play with that design scheme.

La Bruja Verda

Alejandra Paola Diaz wears an outfit very reminiscent of the Scarlet Witch, only in shades of green. She's got full leggings, and not nylons, and has an assortment of gold jewelry, looking a bit more 'gypsy' than the Scarlet Witch traditionally has (with the exception of the Busiek Avengers years, when she wore a bit more flash). The largest departure from the Scarlet Witch look is that she also wears dark green shades over her eyes. For powers, she peers over her shades and, combined with expansive hand-gestures (that might superficially resemble the gestures associated with spellcasting, to the unitiated), mesmerizes people with the enervating green radiance shining forth from her eyes, placing them into a deep trance. When things have progressed past that sort of subtlety, she whips off her glasses and starts glaring at people, the green glow from her eyes intensifying to spotlight intensity and causing weakness and fatigue, shortness of breath and mental confusion, as the targets seem to visibly age under her gaze, stumbling to the ground, weak as kittens. This effect takes it's toll on her, as she draws heavily on the energies within her, and she also seems to visibly age, although not nearly as much as those she's afflicting. If she maintained the effect too long, people could actually die of age-related afflictions, such as heart attacks from over-exertion, but she is pretty good at knowing when to stop... When she does, and the green glow subsides, her shades safely back over her eyes, the aging effect reverses slowly, and, within an hour, her victims will be back to full health, if perhaps still fatigued, while she recovers from the strain in mere minutes, her energies rebuilding within herself at great speed.

Alejandra primarily speaks Spanish while 'in character' as La Brujah Verda (the Green Witch), and acts what she feels is appropriately 'witchy' and obscure, but, despite having been born in Panama (to a US serviceman), she's a natural born US citizen through and through, and speaks English without an accent, having grown up in Albuqurque (indeed, a native speaker of Spanish might note that her Spanish is... not great...).

She gained her powers when sneaking off to smoke a cigarette in an abandoned building, which was suddenly the site of a couple of punches thrown by the battling Abomination and Hulk. One shoved a bit of rebar through the other, and a gout of gamma-irradiated blood spurted forth and trickled down the wall into the basement, where she was huddled, as the building collapsed around her. She looked up to receive a torrent of radioactive blood in the face, and her eyes absorbed unusual properties from the gamma radiation, allowing her to generate entrancing light and enervating radiation from her gamma-mutated glowing green eyes.

So, despite her 'green Scarlet Witch' get-up and pose, she's very much a Hulk legacy, with gamma-induced powers.

She's a smidge stronger and tougher than she would otherwise appear, being an average height young woman with no particular athletic ability, and can hold her own in a bare-knuckled brawl with a much larger man, but has nothing like the sorts of superhuman strength or toughness one would usually associate with a gamma-radiation-empowered character, and is woefully unprepared to get into a fistfight with someone who knows what they are doing.

Widowmaker

Nikolai Denisov has no secret identity. He's only seventeen, and hopes that he's finally 'topped off' at a hair over seven feet in height, but he's well aware that others who have gone through the procedures he went through as a child have been taller... Growing up in the former 'Soviet science city' of Koltsovo, Nikolai was one of a half-dozen children being treated to wear the next generation of Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man armors, designed for superhumanly strong and hardy figures averaging seven and a half feet in height. (The process used was a variation on the procedure used to grow the original wearer of the Titanium Man armor, later refined in one direction by the Power Broker, and made much safer and more reliable by the Russian mutant genius known as 'the Gremlin.') With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the children were no longer slated to be outfitted into powered armor, but instead where going to be shipped off to various rich and influential government contractors, such as oil magnates. Natasha Romanov heard of this through contacts she retained within her former homeland, and snuck back into Russia to rescue these children, experimented upon all their lives to serve as 'super-soldiers,' from a life of breaking legs and intimidating political rivals. A daring rescue it was, armored troopers and Russian operatives on their tails the entire way, but the Black Widow succeeded in getting the kids to safety in the US, where SHIELD helped set them up with foster parents (who were generally aging former Soviet defectors, living secret lives in the US under new names), with Nikolai being the oldest, and therefore, the most noticeable, since he was already unusually tall for his age.

A few years have passed since that fateful and frightening night, and Nikolai has spent the most time with Natasha herself, learning martial arts, and how to not only use his superhuman strength, but, more importantly, how to hold it in check and not accidentally hurt someone. His English is still thickly accented, although his younger 'siblings' (none of whom are actually biologically related) have had an easier time learning a new language. Due to his size and the awkwardness caused by his growth spurts, he often found Natasha's fighting style frustrating, but she kept him working at gymnastics, fighting against his body's inclination to become a giant slab of uncoordinated muscle, and resulting in him perhaps not being quite as strong as he could have been, but being vastly more acrobatic and flexible, able to move with an agility that seems impossible for a man of his size.

He wears a costume based off of Natasha's black suit, with a pull-over facemask and hood, although his own bracers and belt are a bit more masculine in design (and contain the same array of grappling lines, 'widow's bite' tasers, single-shot shotgun shells, explosive charges and thermite, among other things, as her own bracers and belt). The suit has the same sort of protective qualities as her own, muffling impact, but the 'wall-crawling' adhesives she used don't work as well for a man of his weight, and he primarily uses them to aid in grappling maneuvers. Similarly, the swing line cables she would use are unreliable for him, and he is more likely to fire them at a person to tangle them up, then to attempt to swing from building to building.

Despite his association with the Black Widow, and variation on her costume, Widowmaker is more of a Captain America legacy (or, shudder, *D-Man* legacy!), being a super-serum enhanced super-soldier.

Whisper

Izota Sibanda is a very stern looking woman with African facial features and skin so black it appears almost blue-ish. She has a diamond-shaped red crystal implanted in the center of her forehead, and moves and speaks with an almost mechanical economy of motion, because she is in fact a machine.

A synthezoid, Izota has muscles of carbon nano-fiber, and bones of artificial diamond composite. In her gut are sixty four compartmentalized bioreactors. Her neural computer 'brain' extends all the way down into her chest cavity, for extra secure storage. She is hundreds of times stronger and tougher than the human woman she appears to be, and also significantly faster, having an encyclopedic knowledge of subjects as diverse as linguistics and mechanics (although she is by no means an intuitive genius, despite vast stores of data and a truly photographic memory). Information that she does not already know, she can download by emitting a scanning laser from the red crystal on her forehead, which can 'read' text, or directly interface with many types of computer.

Despite looking and acting somewhat like a female Vision, Whisper is 100% Wakandan technology, using Vibranium as a power source (and also explaining at least some of her durability, as the Vibranium infusing her synthetic body absorbs some damaging impact). She was designed by a Wakandan scientist who had grown tired of the 'tribes' in Wakanda and their totem spirits and mystical rites and power struggles (such as between the Panther and Ape clans) tearing her nation apart over 'superstitious nonsense.' Eager to prove that it wasn't 'heart-shaped herbs' or 'mumbo-jumbo' that would lead the way to Wakanda's future, but science and innovation, 'free of the shackles of superstition,' Dr. Sibanda created Izota, a synthetic Wakandan who could champion their people in a way that the various super-powered tribal champions could not match.

As such, Whisper is very much like the Vision, a synthetic human, but closer to being a Black Panther legacy.

Einherjar

Thirteen year old Calder Manning's father promised that he would be 'back before you know it, kiddo' before leaving on deployment to Afghanistan.

The letter, and the complimentary flag, arrived six months later.

1400 years ago, Steiner ruffled his son's hair, and left him a dagger, telling him to 'watch over your mother,' before getting on the dragon-prowed longship and going a-Viking. He woke up in Valhalla, the wound to his gut gone, and spent the next 14 centuries fighting and dying gloriously on the fields, rising every night and feasting with the men he'd slain, and who'd slain him, countless times, preparing for the final battle, at Ragnarok.

Sometimes he wondered why his son never arrived in Valhalla, in all that time. Had he died some ignoble death? It gnawed at him, but as years turned into centuries, he learned to accept it, until he felt the call...

The Valkyrie rarely spend much time mingling with the Einherjar, after collecting their warrior souls and bringing them to Valhalla, so it came as something of a surprise when the supremely intimidating woman strode into the hall and brusquely motioned for him to come with her. "Don your armor and bring your weapons."

He was surprised to find himself led to the Bifrost itself, where Heimdall told him that he had been bound to an ancient oath, and would do as directed and bring no dishonor to Asgard in his time in the Middle Realms.

And then he was on Earth. A ten year old mortal boy stood holding an ancient dagger, one that Steiner recognized. After some misunderstandings, he found that the boy's own father had gone to war and never returned, at that he and his mother were now at risk of being run out of their home. He understood instinctively that this was no mere echo of his own broken promise to his own son, but that this boy was some many times removed descendent of his, and that he was being given a second chance to make good on his promise, as well as that of the boy's own father.

Steiner, as an Einherjar, is clad in Asgardian armor, and carries a few melee weapons. He's not exactly superhuman, but has spent the last 1400 years fighting and dying *every day,* and so goes well beyond any mortal definition of 'fearless,' as well as being effectively superhumanly tough, as there is no pain he has not felt, no injury he has not suffered. If 'killed,' his body fades away, reclaimed by unseen Valkyries, and whisked back to Valhalla, where he is resurrected that evening along with the others, and could be recalled to Midgard, in some cases, within hours.

Calder attempts to dress him up in his fathers clothing every now and then, and his mother has no idea what to make of this strange man with the stranger accent and utterly *insane* mannerisms that her son has befriended (and whom, it sometimes seems, is trying to hook her up with...).

Whackiness and child protective services ensue as Steiner attempts to teach his video-game-obsessed descendent the manly arts of fighting with a greataxe, hunting boar with a spear, drinking ale and wenching.

Calder / Einherjar isn't really a 'legacy' of anyone, although he draws from the Asgardian legacy of Thor. He's more my own version of Juston and his Sentinel. Not every Young Avenger was a 'bait and switch' after all. Patriot, for instance, both appeared to be a Captain America legacy, and, eventually, became one!

Young Glory

Clad in a patriotic red, white and blue (mostly white) full figure uniform that includes a full mask, this acrobatic heroine operates out of Charlotte, South Caroline. She uses a fighting style that revolves around throwing stars, which she throws with seemingly superhuman accuracy (witnesses swear they've seen them 'bank' in mid-throw to hit someone in motion), and fighting batons that she can snap together into a single staff, and which she has also used to perform 'impossible' stunts, like knocking a bullet out of the air, or turning her forearm or calf just so, so that the fighting batons fastened there block a strike.

Yen Hue Cutler, under the mask, is of Vietnamese descent, although she was adopted by an American nurse working in Vietnam, and is now a US citizen. She is, unknown to most, the half-sister of Mantis, and shares limited psychic powers (primarily empathic and precognitive gifts, which greatly enhance her mystique as a martial artist, as she seems to be able to anticipate and counter whatever her foes are planning, but also a very limited degree of telekinesis, which she uses to redirect shuriken in flight), and also has received training at the same monastery in Hue, Vietnam that her sister learned the alien fighting style of the Priests of Pama.

After years in the US, she is more likely to speak with a southern accent (which she plays up when in costume), than a Vietnamese one, and most people assume that she's a blonde haired blue eyed 'southern belle' under that mask... She does not share her half-sister's eccentricity about the use of the personal pronoun, and never refers to herself as 'this one.'

Despite her patriotic garb, and use of 'stars' and 'bars,' she is no Captain America legacy, but a Mantis legacy.


Yeah, Mantis. Pretty much the last Avenger I would normally be inclined to make a 'legacy' character for...

Dragonstrike

Zhurong Kam was born in Hong Kong, and appears as a clean-cut serious young man in a red and gold variation on Iron Fist's costume (with actual boots, thick metal bracers inscribed with coiling dragons, and no upraised collar 'wings'). He is quite skilled with martial arts, as one would expect of someone dressed like Iron Fist, and supplements his martial arts with mystical seeming moves, to 'Unleash the Dragon's Fire' (blast of fire) or call upon the 'Six Thunder Strike' (which produces a blast of electricity).

Kam worked as a runner in the bottom tiers of a Hong Kong criminal organization, which, through a baffling series of cutouts, eventually led back to the Mandarin. The same Mandarin who saw potential in Kam, and arranged for special training for the boy, after he was shot during a deal gone awry, nearly dying in an bold, but foolish, attempt to save his unknown employers merchandise. And so Kam now works as a 'superhero,' sent to infiltrate the American superhero community, and given access to the same Makluan tech that empowered the Swordsman's sword, allowing him to produce blasts of fire, force or electricity, or, at the risk of shorting out his devices for sixty seconds, disintegrating solid matter. His Makluan tech is concealed within his dragon-inscribed bracers, although Kam wears four rings, one on each middle finger and ring finger, that he will allow others to believe are the source of this power, if his secret is discovered, as he tends to layer lies within other lies, to leave himself a secret advantage even if his cover is blown.

While appearing to be an Iron Fist legacy (martial artist with some mystical tricks), he is more of a Swordsman legacy (Mandarin empowered turncoat), and, while loyal to the Mandarin over his teammates, he is unaware that the Mandarin actually supports much of what the American heroes do, as it is not at all in the Mandarin's interests if Kree or Skrulls or whatever blow up the planet!

Kam is unaware of this deeper game, and is occasionally conflicted and confused, as the Mandarin never seems to take advantage of the opportunities he uncovers to sabotage the team's efforts. He may 'take the initiative' and end up betraying his teammates *and* pissing off his boss...

Longbow

Many, many centuries ago, the Prince of Asgard was a young man, headstrong, impetuous and a bit of a cad. He had not yet earned Mjolnir, or the respect of his people, and had a casual affair with a young goddess named Skadi, half-Vanir and half-Frost Giant, by blood. It meant nothing to him, and she returned to her haunts in the cold mountains outside of Asgard somewhat bitter about the whole thing.

Well over a thousand years later, perhaps even two, as she did not keep track of time in that way, her friend Uller, also a god of the wintery reaches, of the hunt, and of archery, came to her with gossip from mighty Asgard, that the Prince of Thunder had so outraged his father that he had been banished to Midgard! And not merely banished, but stripped of Mjolnir, of his godly powers, and even of his memories, forced to live as a mortal man, and no hero or champion, but a lame doctor, unsuited to glorious combat, and put into a life of service to other mortals!

She had thought herself *long* since 'over' that millennia-ago one-night stand, but the thought of the Thunderer brought so low brought a smile to her lips, and she resolved to see this wonderful sight, of 'Prince' Thor, tending the wounded and sick, like a she-bear tending her cubs.

Skadi had long had an arrangement with Heimdall, by which she would journey to the Middle World to hunt the beasts of the arctic, during the cold Earth winters, in exchange for her assistance in defending the realm from her Frost Giant kin, and keeping Heimdall apprised as to their movements. He did not seem suspicious, and she passed him to visit the Earth again, only this time, her prey was no mortal beast, but a god in the body of a man.

Spying upon this 'Dr. Donald Blake,' she found herself wanting to see him even closer, and so dressed herself as a mortal woman, and faked a skiing injury, so that the haughty once-Prince would tend to her fake injuries. In the journey of a thousand steps, which so often takes one to places unforeseen, she found herself seducing this mortal doctor, some part of herself excusing the act as merely getting revenge on Thor, for his past thoughtlessness.

Months later, in Asgard, she recognized the signs within herself that she was with child, and consulted with Uller, whom she had finally begun a true relationship (after he had pined over her for many centuries). The child, a quarter giant, a quarter god, and half human, proved weak, in her mothers eyes, perhaps too weak to live in the harsh conditions that Skadi and Uller enjoyed, and so they came to the decision to raise her on Midgard, where she would be more powerful than her peers, and in no great danger.

Heimdall disagreed with their plans, and allowed her to find mortals to raise her child, teaching her how to hear the prayers of those hundreds of mortals who still knew the name of Skadi, and called themselves the Asatru.

And so it was, in the snowy lands of Michigan, a pair of ex-bikers turned diary farmers found a pair of Asgardian gods in their living room, explaining to them that they had been chosen to raise a god's child as a mortal, and that they would receive the favor of Skadi in so doing.

Saga 'Stevenson' (Skadisdottir) grew up doted upon by her odd parents, with visits every winter from her true mother, who at first would take her up into Canada to hunt caribou and polar bears, but in her mid-teens, would bring her to Asgard, where she would be as likely to find a troll or giant across her bow.

As a Young Avenger, Saga goes by the name Longbow, and wears a costume that could be mistaken for a take on Hawkeyes original outfit, as the design aesthetic for Asgardian armor is not so different (thanks to Jack Kirby). She is tall, inches over six feet, and could look Thor in the eye, if they met. Pale of skin, with long blonde hair, she is superhumanly strong, able to lift a couple of tons, and quite rugged, due to a mixture of Asgardian and giant-ish blood. Her bow is fashioned from the six-tined antlers of an Asgardian stag, and requires strength such as hers to bend, and she has a few arrows with tips of uru metal, able to penetrate even the hull of a Skrull scout ship, as well as a single arrowhead made from a fragment of the Bifrost itself, which she can hold to transport herself to Heimdall's presence, or fire into an enemy to send them to a random location somewhere in the Nine Worlds (with the only caveat that they will not appear in whatever world she currently occupies, so that if she shoots someone while on Midgard, the only guarantee is that they will not reappear in this universe!).

Her mother, a goddess of winter, she is innured to the coldest temperatures, and finds winter storms and trackless ice pleasant, and not all hindering. She knows little of Asgardian magic, but her mother has taught her to call up a flurry of snow around herself to transform her mortal clothing into her Asgardian armor, and summon her bow to her hand. With another flurry of snow, she can do the reverse, and once again be a tall pretty girl in normal clothing.

From her giant-ish blood, she has learned to increase her size, growing to just over nine feet in height, and quadrupling her already incredible strength. Her bow increases in size with her, and her arrows strike with great force, even without expending one of the rare ones with uru tips.

At a glance, Longbow might seem a Hawkeye legacy. When she changes sizes, she might even seem to be evoking that time when Clint Barton used Pym Particles, and called himself Goliath. But she's a Thor legacy through and through, despite not knowing herself that Thor, or, at least, Donald Blake, is her father...

In the pages of a Young Avengers run, we met the 'Young Masters of Evil,' who were modeled off of the Masters of Evil, but, like the Young Avengers, not exactly legacies of their inspirations.

This would be one not seen;

Times were tough for Paul Pierre Duval, the supervillain known as the Grey Gargoyle. His 'nest egg' had run dry, and he felt the need to do some crime to support himself in the style to which he'd grown accustomed. Still a bit tipsy from the night before, and a bit out of practice with the supervillain-ing, his plan on the bank heist was to go in and turn to granite and petrify someone to make a grand display, and then demand all the money. Unfortunately, he bumped into someone and a security guard who took his job way too seriously recognized his supervillain attire and shot him before he even transformed! He quickly turned to stone, and made a bad situation worse, ending up going to prison. Unknown to him, a young woman standing behind him, the same woman he had bumped into in the first place, was the unlucky recipient of the bullet which has passed through his own torso.

Her body, splattered with his blood, and currently home to the bullet that has passed through him, petrified like one of his victims, and after an hour had passed, and superheroes were on the scene, the others 'un-petrified,' but she remained locked in a granite form. Reed Richards and Henry Pym were among the experts called by the NYPD, who had unclear protocols as to what to do with civilians who had been turned to stone, and they managed to transport her to Reed's lab, with the help of Pym's shrinking powers. Even after the bullet was removed, she did not revert to flesh and blood, and it was some hours later that, to the surprise of all, the 'statue' began to slowly move.

A physiological reaction to the Grey Gargoyles blood in her system had given her the ability to transform into granite, and to also move and function in that state, as he could.

A psychological reaction to being shot (even if the wound was entirely superficial, the bullet having expended much of it's force passing through Duval's midriff) resulted in young Caroline Anthony ('Ro' to her friends) having great difficulty turning back to flesh and blood, with even the slightest surprise or moment of self-doubt resulting in her 'stoning up' and then needing hours of meditation to 'stone down' again.

And so, her own flesh and blood life having been, by her own judgement, unexciting, she chose to remain in stone form, and named herself 'Stone Fox,' thinking to become a hero, but falling in with a bad crowd, initially, and ending up on the wrong side of the hero/villain divide (more a case of standing with her friends, who turned out to be bad friends, than any burning desire to 'do crime').

Attempting to 'stand out' in her teens, Ro had a few tattoos, which were invisible grey-on-gray in her stone form, and so quickly jazzed her stone form up with it's own adornments.

On her left arm, from shoulder to near her elbow, blocky yellow letters spell out STONE. On her right arm, centered on her bicep and also extending down towards her elbow, fancier cursive yellow text spells out FOX. On her left shoulderblade, an Egyptian cartouche representing the god Geb is similarly done in a metallic gold paint that looks like gold leaf, and on the right shoulderblade, a heraldric device, that of a fox, rampant.

Black leather pants, fingerless gloves and a sports bra complete her outfit, the sort of attire she wouldn't have felt bold enough to wear as a flesh and blood person, but she feels as invulnerable socially in her stone form as her body is resilient.

Her form is slightly more durable than actual granite, due to it's somewhat amorphous nature (which allows her to move), and she is superhumanly strong, as well, enough to rival Spider-Man, owing to her density (which has quintupled her weight, and made it impossible for her to swim, somewhat mitigated from her no longer needing to breathe, eat or drink, or being susceptible to extremes of pressure or temperature).

She's discovered after a few bullets knocked chips out of her, and one traumatic incident where one of her fingers broke off, that her stone form regenerates, albeit slowly. Minor damage, cracks and chips, vanishes within a few days, and her broken finger she desperately superglued back on, and within a week it 'felt normal again.' (During this time she was especially unwilling to revert back to flesh and blood, not wanting to address what might happen to her finger...)

Ro, as Stone Fox, committed her crimes while still a juvenile, and has managed to get something of a 'do-over.' She intends to keep her nose clean, and find a better class of 'friends,' who won't drag her into shady business and then leave her holding the bag...

Always gotta have a 'supervillain' legacy (a la Iron Lad / Kang or Vision & Jocasta being creations of Ultron), and / or someone who used to a villain (like Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver or Wonder Man) on an Avengers team!

And, the exact same character, from a power standpoint, but totally different.

Butte knows that she was never a human woman. She even vaguely remembers being a mostly mindless servant of the alien supercomputer, Dominus. As it has been explained to her, Dominus used the brain engrams of a human, who also served Dominus as the super-powered villain Sunstroke, to place an 'echo of sentience' and 'vital animation' into creatures and matter from the surrounding environment, imparting a sort of life, humanoid form, and dim intellect, in the creations called Gila, Cacti, and Butte, who appeared to be a thickly built humanoid woman of solid sandstone.

When it was just the three of them, whatever spark of sentience had been tapped from Sunstroke's mind was not enough for her to remember but flashes of those days, but Dominus went further, and created an entire army of Gilas and Cacti and Buttes. The original three served as the templates for their duplicates, and were exposed a second time to the brain engrams of Sunstroke. Their duplicates remained as dull and incurious as they had once been, but the original Butte found that she had thoughts, and desires, and that these things did not mesh well with the plans of their creator. And so, in a spectacular battle with the West Coast Avengers, she simply walked away, as Dominus was completely unaware that she would be capable of ignoring his order to attack with her many stony peers, and just walk away.

She's laid-back by nature, and can fall into a motionless state for days at a time, her thoughts slowing to a glacial pace, but she has come to fear such times, as she has begun to 'dream.' Her dreams are not those of her own life, but of a childhood in the suburbs, and later, a trailer park, and then a great fire. Butte recognizes that these are probably flashes of memory from the damaged mind of Sunstroke, and there's a part of her that resists the thought that she is not a real person, that even her dreams are those stolen from another persons, a *real* persons long-forgotten childhood.

She worries that some part of Sunstroke may be buried within her, and that if she explores or encourages these dreams, she might 'wake him up' and be swept away, until she is only a dream, having never been real in the first place. So, against her sedentary nature, she has taking to adventuring, becoming something of a hero, simply to keep active, and attempting to perhaps create memories and experiences of her own so vivid that they replace or drive away those remnants of another man's past.

She has, against all odds, found herself teamed up with another woman made of stone, who jokingly gave her the 'civilian name' of Betty Montana (after Butte, Montana), and together, they fight crime!

With a body made of sandstone, and a thick, powerful build, Butte is stronger than her teammate, Stone Fox, but not quite as durable, although, like Stone Fox, she's capable of slow regeneration, which, in her case, involves taking up loose bits of sandstone and somehow causing them to flow into her body and replace any missing mass. Mostly ignoring the fashion advice of her friend, who can be somewhat capricious, at times, 'Betty' prefers to dress in sturdy blue-collar clothing, with blue jeans, work boots and a t-shirt being her preferred 'superhero costume.' (Although Stone Fox has occasionally attempted to dress her up with a work shirt and bandanna, to play off her superficial resemblance to 'Rosie the Riveter.')

Unknown even to her best friend, Butte is aware that the other 'originals' also left the control of Dominus.

She's spoken to Cactus, who found a mountainside and took root, and who has grown into a colony of hundreds of saguaro cacti, all connected through a network of roots, into a vast, cold and alien intelligence, more like a computer than a person. Despite 'his' strangeness, she finds him occasionally useful, as he can form amazing leaps of intuition, and she has secretly consulted him to solve cases beyond her or Stone Fox's fledgling investigative skills.

She has not had any contact with Gila, but has read of a string of serial killings in the Midwest that seem familiar to her, and suspects that Gila, also dreaming the dreams of another man's life, is being drawn to places and people seen in these images, and committing animalistic acts of violence, when the reality doesn't match the dream. She knows that, at some point, she will have to confront this, but feels a strange sort of loyalty to Gila, who shares her unusual past.

Butte, Cactus and Gila. I have a weakness for picking some of the worst ever bottom-tier characters and trying to find a way to redeem them from the dust-bin of history!

Some might mistake the leonine Lyonesse for a Tigra legacy, but she'll quickly disabuse them of that notion when she pops the head off of her lionskin costume and is revealed to be a superhumanly strong young Greek girl!

Aura Samaras was born to a Greek diplomat (and former Olympic athlete) and her husband, a career military man (and *also* former Olympic athlete, that's where they met, actually). Unknown to most, their families had a knack for producing stronger-than-average children, who tested negative for any sort of mutant gene or drug-enhancements, and very carefully kept their true strength levels under wraps, to avoid suspicion and an unfortunate history of people like themselves getting murdered when their heritage came out. For, like approximate 7% of the Greek population, Aura's parents were very distantly related to the god Herakles (called Hercules, by the Romans), although the vast majority of them inherited no special traits from their fleeting blood relation to the son of Zeus. Aura's parents were different. Her father could lift a hair over a thousand pounds, which served him well, on occasion, in military service, and was quietly known among his peers in the military, and kept in reserve as a secret weapon. Her mother, with a stronger bloodline, could lift about a ton and a quarter, and kept that secret from all but her own family, holding back as necessary, or ensuring that no one was present to see when she needed to use her full strength. Aura, growing up with these parents, and an entire family 'in the know' about the 'family secret,' inherited more of the long dormant divine bloodline of Hercules, and can lift about fifteen tons, and is fairly certain that she has yet to reach her full growth, as she also has noticed that she has stopped aging, so that she is still physically perhaps fifteen, despite being eighteen already. (Certain events that were supposed to occur monthly, only occurring annually gave her the first hint as to this slowed aging.)

Traveling with her diplomat mother, Aura spent years in France, where she picked up the language, and her quirky use of the word 'Lyonesse' to describe her lion-themed superhero identity, and then in New York, where she polished her English, and perhaps picked up some bad habits running with 'the wrong crowd.'

As a superhero, she wears the impenetrable hide of the Nemean Lion, which has survived thousands of years, and is somehow able to mystically resize itself to snugly fit Aura's slim body. Appearing much like any other skin-tight bodysuit, in the sandy colors of a lion, it is capped with the (shrunken to fit her head) head of the brute, with her eyes barely visible from within the mouth of the creature, it's brushy mane trailing down to her shoulders. It's tail is a part of the costume, to her annoyance, and, rather than allow it to flop around uselessly behind her, she keeps it wrapped around her waist and tucked into itself, much in the manner of a belt. The equally indestructible claws of the outfit protrude or retract magically, and are each individually longer than her fingers (and pprotrude from between them), and, combined with her incredible strength, can rend through metal, like a knife through cloth.

Aura is not invulnerable, by herself, and while no force appears able to pierce or cut the hide, force from gunshots can pass through to leave bruises on her flesh, or, in the case of high velocity sniper rounds, or similar devasting impacts, even break ribs or cause her greater injury. Still, those expecting 'Lyonesse' to be an agile Tigra sort of character will be shocked to see her shrug off small-arms fire, and retaliate by hurling an SUV at her attackers!

Aura is generally a fun-loving young woman, not quite so boisterous or Falstaffian as her distant ancestor, and yet quite a bit more enthusiastic and tom-boyish than some of her peers. The only thing she hasn't shrugged off is the nickname 'Hercu-Lass,' which she loathes, and makes her regret every telling anyone the source of her powers, which was supposed to be this big family secret...

Unlike Longbow, who has no clue as to her connection to the Norse god of Thunder, Aura knows full well who her ancient ancestor is, and, unlike Thor, Hercules is well aware that he has thousands of descendants (not all in Greece), and what most of them are up to at any given time.

Buffoon he may appear at times, but Hercules takes being a god (the head of a large and mostly unknowing family) seriously, and is the reason why Aura Samaras 'accidentally found' the Nemean Lionskin in the first place.

Soon, operating so publically, Aura may discover who has been assassinating other offspring of Hercules over the generations, and may indeed discover that her fledgling superhero career was nothing more than a ruse, to use her as bait to flush those assassins into the open, so that Hercules can truly deal with them, once and for all...

As is my wont, I've found it easier to come up with female character ideas, so here's some dudes.

James Paul 'Jimmy' Angar was one of the men selected to be empowered for use as potential soldiers to help oppose the machinations of Thanos by Moondragon, when she first arrived on earth (a plan that was mostly abandoned by the Titan-trained psychic, due, in large part, to the lackluster results of those experiments).

Circuitry implanted into his brain and nervous system allowed him to receive and broadcast electronic signals, which, in theory, would have allowed him to manipulate broadcasts and seize control of machinery worldwide, had his human brain been up to the task of translating data on such a scale. Instead, he had to wear a special helmet to drown out most of the 'noise' from Earth's signal-drenched atmosphere, and only is able to translate radio and television broadcasts with mechanical assistance. His powers did make him ideally suited to maintain and watch over Moondragon's Titanian spacecraft, which she had concealed off-shore soon after arriving, and did not wish to fall into the hands of those who might abuse it's advanced systems.

Years have passed, and Moondragon has left Earth, no longer having any concern for her abandoned scout ship, and so Jimmy has come to think of it as 'his' ship, and uses it to operate as a hero, at times, first simply in a disaster relief capacity (rescuing victims of flooding, or trapped by a wildfire), but eager to find more heroic uses of this perfectly good 'flying saucer,' which, thanks to his otherwise unsuccessful neural enhancements, he can interface with remotely, just by thought, and even perceive events around it (or within it) through it's own sensors.

The 'Sunhawk' as he calls it, based on a design on the hull (which is something else entirely, but he has misinterpreted), is an unarmed scout ship, capable of foiling most detection technologies available to Earth folk (but not becoming invisible to the human eye, so leaving behind plenty of eyewitnesses to his exploits), and with life support and movement capabilities making it well suited to operate in space, air or underwater.

While unarmed, Jimmy has had a few years in the 'Sunhawk' to figure out clever ways to use the ships other systems offensively. The thrust is gravitic, and if he decelerates as approaching someone at speed, it creates a 'backwash' of force that can level a building. The ship has some sort of external loudspeakers, that he can turn up to deafening volume and create a stunning burst of static that is sufficient to disorient people. The ships communications use an assortment of EM spectra, and he can pinpoint 'communicate' to an area at such frequency as to cause items in the area to rapidly superheat and perhaps even explode (particularly by transmitting vast amounts of meaningless data, such as the value of pi out to a million places, along a microwave frequency).

Like his brother, who was known as 'Angar the Screamer' after his modification by that 'bald alien woman,' Jimmy was probably not the sort of man one would expect to become a super-enhanced soldier in the war against Thanos (although, perhaps, exactly the sort of man that would be abandoned afterwards, being judged unsuitable for such a role...), but Jimmy has risen above his upbringing, and may yet accomplish more than his dismissive 'creator' would ever have imagined.

Also unlike his brother, Jimmy never got into the counter-culture retro-revival, and still prefers to wear a work shirt, jeans and boots, and is probably the only person on earth to own an alien flying saucer and wear a Stetson.

Morus Storm, aka Undertow is a lean Atlantean male with blue skin, dark blue-black eyes and light blonde hair. He wears a skinsuit similar to one worn by Namor at times to keep himself hydrated, black and scaled in appearance, with gold trim.

Morus is quick to point out if asked that he's from an alternate universe, but not give other details about his exact origins. He's got above average strength and durability, even for an Atlantean, and yet lacks the typical Atlantean dependence on water, being able to operate out of water for at least a day at a time, without any apparent difficulties.

Underwater, which, even for someone living the life of a superhero, isn't the most common place to find oneself in the course of crimefighting, Undertow displays additional powers, his skin (and costume) being able to blend so smoothly into the water that he becomes effectively invisible, and some unconscious process allowing him to manipulate the water around him, so that he leaves no ripple or wake of his passage, being able to leap thirty feet into a body of water, and not even produce a splash, or ripple afterwards, as the water seems to part to allow him passage, and then seal up quietly and without a sign of disturbance behind him. While underwater, the water itself pushes him forward, and he can propel himself underwater without any visible swimming motion (or much faster, when the water's movements accelerate his own swimming). The water itself seems to protect him as well, and while he is superhumanly durable on the surface, he's significantly harder to hurt underwater, as the water seems to 'thicken' around him, and causes attacks to be blunted long before they reach him.

His powers are the result of his unusual parentage. In whatever alternate universe he comes from, his mother, Susan Storm, the Invisible Woman, married Namor, and become Queen, and later, Queen-Mother, of Atlantis, and Morus is their firstborn son. Morus has met the Namor of this universe, who finds his existence amusing, and the Susan Richards of this world, who finds his presence somewhat inconvenient, as her husband was not at all amused to meet the son of his wife and another man, even if he was from another universe...

Undertows good friend and constant companion-in-adventure is Man O' War, an armored figure that could easily be mistaken for an Iron Man legacy, as his armor does have some design elements similar to the Stark armors. His two tone coloration is dark blue and pale green (instead of red and gold), and some elements are more rounded and streamlined, as befitting the armors design to operate underwater.

The armor's most unique and distinctive feature is that it has a magnetohydrodynamic drive that functions externally, creating a whirlpool around the armor that propels it at create speed through the water, and, at a lower rate of speed, can even create a 'magnetoaerodynamic' vortex, creating a 'tornado' of air around the wearer, and carrying him through the air, as well. The process turns water or air into a plasmic state, and he can also ignite this plasma (even underwater!), so that he appears to travel surrounded by a tornado of fire, when he needs to move at extreme speeds.

The armor has both electrical weapons and blue-green lasers. When fighting underwater, he sticks to the lasers, although he can 'tone them down' to use to create blinding flashes, illuminate or scan an area or even create fake looking blue-green holograms. The electrical weapons can't be aimed underwater, just creating a shock to everyone near him, but in air follow ion trails created by the lasers to function similar to 'lightning guns.'

Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with Stark or his designs will quickly recognize that these systems are not Stark-tech by any means, but are in fact Atlantean, and the mysterious figure within the armor (who never takes his helmet off in public, because, among other things, he can't breathe air), is also Atlantean. It might be assumed that his armor provide strength enhancement, since he's been seen lifting a car, but he's just using the natural strength of an Atlantean, adapted to survive the crushing pressure a mile beneath the surface of the sea.

Tarum was assigned the armor designed by his scientist grandfather by Namor himself, soon after meeting Morus Storm aka Undertow, and sent to the surface world to 'keep an eye on him,' which Tarum never was quite sure because Namor felt a fatherly sort of protectiveness for this alternate universe 'son' of his, or because he didn't believe his story, and wished to keep an eye on him not only for his own reasons, but to ensure that his presence wasn't in some way a threat to Susan Richards... Tarum realized before asking any further questions on that account that he should probably just keep his trap shut, rather than invite his king's legendary wrath.

Fortunately, he enjoys 'hanging out' and 'getting into adventures' with his new friend, even if he is only half-Atlantean, probably from another dimension, possibly a threat and most definitely a bit of a scandal, since his existence makes some people uncomfortable.

Tarum has a stockier build than Morus (although he is 'only' as strong as a strong Atlantean, and lacks the mutant strength of his slighter friend), as well as darker blue skin, golden-irised eyes and dark red hair, a relatively uncommon sight in Atlantis (and, to his king, a sometimes unpleasant reminder of his late wife-to-be, the Lady Dorma, who was Tarum's aunt).

Any attempt Tarum might make to play up a connection to Stark and his technology is ended the moment he opens his mouth, as no matter how all-concealing his armor and mask, he's never been able to shake an Atlantean accent so thick that literally the first thing anyone says when he speaks is, 'He sounds just like that Namor guy!' (Atlantean accents being pretty distinct, and not easy to mistake for anything else.)

I can't believe someone else remembers Dominus' minions! Nice one! Gila would make a good enemy for a Tigra or Hellcat solo

Thanks! I always loved her chunky look, and wanted to reclaim her from the 'abandoned characters pile.'

For a team that included Wonder Man and Iron Man, they never really amounted to a hill of beans as a threat, but they seemed like they had real potential.

A Fantastic Four legacy team;

In an alternate universe, the Fantastic Four is retired, having split up a few years after the Civil War / Superhuman Registration Act, which happened much sooner after their debut, and before the wedding of Reed & Sue.

In this universe, other bits of FF history remain intact. Johnny Storm still dated Frankie Raye, who became the second Human Torch, and flew off to serve Galactus as Supernova. Ben Grimm still dated Alicia Masters, whose father was the criminal Puppetmaster. A Skrull named Lyja infiltrated their lives, for a time.

Other things were quite different, as Reed Richards came close to spending time in jail (and, indeed, that's what a lot of people thought he did, when he was instead shuffled off to work for the government, which he still does, as head of SHIELD...), and Susan Storm began a romantic relationship with temporary replacement team member, Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner.

When the team disbanded and she retired, it was to accept his request to become Queen of Atlantis, by his side.

The 'new Fantastic Four,' a name they never chose, consist of;

Undertow. This half-Atlantean has the blue skin of a normal (non-mutant) Atlantean and his mother's blonde hair. Same character from upthread. Atleantean abilities, can breathe air or water with no particular weakness either way, and can manipulate water in such a way as to mimic his mother's abilities to become invisible or make 'force fields,' kinda sorta.

Supernova. Frankie Raye had many cosmic adventures that Johnny Storm knew nothing of. Entering a particularly dangerous fight with other former Heralds of Galactus, she had a premonition that things seemed more hopeless than they ever had before, and used the Power Cosmic to form a child within herself, using the DNA of her last human lover, formed within a golden metallic 'egg' that she pulled forth and gave to Norrin Rad, the Silver Surfer, for safekeeping, 'in case I don't make it.' After the terrible battle, her fears were realized, and Norrin Rad brought the egg to Attilan (where Johnny now lived, now married into the Inhuman Royal Family), where, upon Johnny touching it, it responded to his DNA and dissolved into light, revealing a golden-skinned infant, the child of his own DNA and that of Frankie Raye, who he and Crystal chose to raise among the Inhumans, naming her Franklin Raye. Now a teenager, he has taken the superhero name of her mother, Supernova, and has a shell of metallic golden skin (that he can cause to appear or disappear at will) that affords him some protection, somewhat greater than human strength, the ability to levitate (which, combined with his fire powers, allows flight at great speeds) and total life support in any environment. His 'comic flame' can burn underwater or in the depths of space, and is otherwise similar to his fathers powers.

Effigy. Around the time of the Registration Act, Ben Grimm was finally cured of his condition, not just temporarily, as in other instances, but for good. He and Alicia Masters welcomed their new baby girl soon after, and she showed no signs of 'cosmic radiation-induced weirdness,' as her grateful father put it. But, fate is fickle, and it was 'radioactive claw-induced weirdness' she developed from her mother's side, more specifically, from her grandfather, the Puppetmaster. Corinne Masters-Grimm can transform her body into a malleable clay-like form, and reshape it to impersonate others, and, in that form, is all but indestructible, as her clay form pulls itself back together even if it is blown to pieces or scattered over a wide area by some devastating trauma. While she usually remains in a malleable state, in which she has limited stretching powers, and can squeeze through even a tiny keyhole, she can also 'fire herself' and become hard and tough, with a greater degree of superhuman strength, although she is somewhat brittle in this form and it takes longer to 'pull herself together' if she 'gets broken.'

Firedrake. Johnny Storm's *other* child, by the 'Power Skrull' Lyja, who had infiltrated the team, and later served in it openly, has shapeshifting powers inherited from her mother, and can generate intense heat and flame, as a gift from her father. 'Jenny Storm,' as she likes to be called (her Skrull name being nobody's business, in her eyes), prefers to take the form of a scaly dragon-human hybrid, with claws, fangs, scales, a long serpentine tail and broad bat-like wings. She generates her fire internally and breathes it forth in dragon-like gouts. The fact that she can shapechange into a wider array of forms, or that her perky human appearance is also a mask, she keeps secret, as Skrulls are not terribly popular, and her mother taught her the tactical utility of keeping the full extent of her powers under wraps.

It's kind of an oddity of how this team turned out that two of them had different sorts of shapeshifting utility, and two of them had fire-related powers. Since Reed & Sue, in the 616 continuity, already had a pair of kids, and fully 50% of a potential legacy FF are therefore already 'written in stone,' I decided to completely ditch that, and start from scratch, creating four children from relationships that the various FF members have had (or, in the case of Sue and Namor, at least flirted with...). It's also a quirk that both Sue and Johnny ended up royalty, one the 'Queen Mother' of Atlantis, the other the 'consort' to Crystal Amaquelin. I also amused myself by having Johnny, player that he was, have a pair of children, neither of whom are from the woman he married...

One of my favorite Avengers line ups is 'Cap's Kooky Quartet.'

Captain America, the first recruit to the founding Avengers, and three ex-villains, given a chance to redeem themselves and become heroes, decades before that sort of thing became more common with characters like Deathstroke and Sabertooth getting their own books, and hero teams including people like Magneto and Emma Frost and Earth Man.

Still, I love to come up with sideways interpretations of stuff, so here's the beginning of a variant 'Kooky Quartet'...

Their leader;
The Chaplain. This late middle-aged man occasionally shows signs of a no-nonsense military bearing, from two decades of service as an Army chaplain, but the thing most people take away is his gentle voice and kind eyes, which they attribute to his incredible ability to lead. The truth of the matter is that he has a powerful empathic gift, allowing him to sense the feelings of others, and many years of experience using these perceptions to counsel and guide others. He can also manipulate emotions, but prefers not to do so, except in dangerous situations, when he will intimidate the weak-willed, or bolster the will of allies. He has discovered that his gifts are much enhanced against discorporate or spiritual entities, such as ghosts, astral travelers or extra-dimensional creatures such as demons, being able to both sense them much powerfully, and able to influence them, or even hold them at bay or 'exorcise' them.

We've had an assortment of Captain 'Countries' like Captain America and Captain Britain, but even the rare hero that is religious tends to fly that flag pretty low, if at all. There is no 'Captain Catholic,' for instance (and I can certainly see why that sort of thing could be considered so controversial as to be almost radioactive, to editors who generally won't even nail down what political party individual characters belong to...).

Trickshot This brilliant young mathematician has extraordinary accuracy with the custom-built handguns she carries, each equipped with an assortment of special bullets, designed with an array of nonlethal payloads (and a few more lethal ones, to use against robots and monsters and the like). Between the computer-assisted targeting built into her gun, and the special targeting system she wears over one eye, she literally never misses her target (and is often believed to have a mutant power of some sort, allowing her to never miss). She didn't start out with the intention of becoming any sort of machinist or gun-maker or chemical engineer, but the urge to put her mathematical theories on ballistics into play in the field led to her being completely unsatisfied with the current state of firearm technology, and the bullheaded notion (which turned out to be right...) that she could single-handedly improve designs that thousands of people had refined over centuries. Combined with a bullet-resistant costume, she joined the team after the Chaplain saw her out of various legal difficulties, stemming from her firearms-related 'research.'

The 'Hawkeye' of the team packs heat, instead of a bow, and uses 'trick bullets' instead of trick arrows. Like Pym or Stark, she 'built her own powers,' and her drive to prove her designs (and her theories) guides her as much as any desire to be a hero.

The Golden Gunslinger. This lean man dresses up in a cowboy outfit that is just a hair on one side or the other (depending on your point of view) of 'over the top.' He's got the ten-gallon hat, the boots, the billowing leather duster/trenchcoat, the jeans and chaps, and the vest over shirt. He carries a pair of gold-plated gunslingers that he lets others believe are the source of his luck powers, when he doesn't claim instead that they are a mutant power, or from the blessing of an old gypsy woman that he saved, or stemming from a drink of water he took from a mysterious pool in the middle of an Apache reservation. The luck powers themselves are not in dispute. He doesn't even have to look at a target, or have a clear line of fire, to bounce a bullet off of something to hit it, and return fire will, at best, blow holes in his trenchcoat, always seeming to 'just miss' him. He keeps the item he believes to be the true source of his powers, a battered century old sherriff's badge, in his pocket, and shares that secret with no one, although the joke is on him, as the badge is just a badge, and the powers are indeed his own, a result of a destiny he knows nothing about, but that prevents him from dying until he meets that very specific fate.

Subconsciously, he may be aware that he's got some dark destiny, because he parties as hard as he fights, and while he seems utterly unserious and nonchalant, like a kid that never grew up and is still 'playing cowboy,' there's an air of quiet desperation around his hedonism, as if he is trying to tick points off of his bucket list...

The 'Scarlet Witch' of the team. Instead of hex bolts to give other people bad luck, he's got a subconscious field of good luck that only affects himself. And yeah, this team of four has *two* gun-toting heroes, and neither of them is anything like the '90's gun-toting heroes seem in Image (with Stryker) or DC (with the 'Blood Pack') or Marvel (with Cable or the Punisher).

And the fourth member? The 'Quicksilver' of the team? Still percolating in my head.

Still got nothin' on that fourth member of 'Cap's Kooky Quartet,' so moving on...

The superheroine who first appeared as a humanoid cheetah, able to run as fast as a car seemingly indefinitely, and up to 120 MPH in short bursts, who answered to Faster Pussycat turned out to not be a half-woman/half-cheetah after all, when the serum wore off and she reverted to being all-woman.

'Doctor' Bethany Bettany (she hates her parents for this name, and prefers that people call her Beth, or 'Doctor Beth') didn't technically finish her doctorate, and probably shouldn't be calling herself a doctor, quite yet, even if her thesis is mostly done and ready, just kind of sidelined by the whole 'superpowers' thing. She interned under Dr. Henry Pym, studying 'exotic biology,' which included both alien and superhuman biologies, as well as those that had been enhanced or altered in various ways (such as through exposure to gamma radiation or Pym particles or ionic energy). Her mentor being somewhat preoccupied with his own superheroing activities, which she often ended up at least peripherally aware of, as she did some research or labwork for him when he was 'on a case,' Bethany learned a lot of stuff that she might not have been intended to learn, as Dr. Pym trusted her perhaps a bit too much with his own work (a laxity on his part that has perhaps contributed to there being two different other Ant-Men, another Yellowjacket, and several Giant-Men & Goliaths...).

After six months working for Pym, she was recruited by SHIELD to help them catalog and put away material left behind at his Wundagore site by Dr. Herbert Wyndham, the so-called High Evolutionary (who, at the time, had left the planet), and there, knowing far more than her handlers expected, she managed to reverse-engineer some of that worthy's work, to create a series of serums that, combined with Pym particles, could alter her body into a New Man like form, a hybrid of animal and human, with slightly superhuman abilities. It was using a serum based on cheetah DNA that she made her first superhuman appearance, but that is only one of a half-dozen or more serums she has prepared, and each time she appears, it will be in a different half-human/half-animal hybrid form, as she has ampules with eagle DNA, shark DNA, cobra DNA, etc. When she breaks onto the scene in such a form, she will often announce whatever whimsical superhero codename comes to mind, so that she has not only been Faster Pussycat, but also Gorilla Girl, Ladybug and Elephantasia, depending on whatever silly name pops into her head in the moment.

She's not entirely sure what sort of superhero codename she'd use, on her own, as it's not publically known that these various animal themed superheroes are the same young women, by the general public (although both SHIELD and Hank Pym are aware of the connection, with Pym somewhat chagrined that he has inadvertently allowed his 'Pym particles' to escape his lab yet again, and empower yet another individual...).

She's leaning towards Animalia or perhaps just Fauna,, but, it's not really a pressing concern yet. First she has to finish up her thesis, and then maybe she can be Doctor Bestiary!

Wakandan heroes, who don't have much to do with panthers;

Wakanda has been ruled off and on by the champions of various tribes, including, most notably, the Panther tribe, but also the short-lived (and ill-regarded...) reign of the Ape tribe, through their violent and superhumanly strong champion, 'Man-Ape.'

And yet there are other tribes, some with their own spirit totems and superhumanly empowered champions.

The Serpent tribe has shunned rulership, their champion generally serving as an advisor to whichever champion holds the throne, although the Man-Ape did not trust them, and banned them from court. Their champion, a seemingly ageless man believed to be the same man who advised T'Challa's father T'Chaka, answers to Wekesa, has superhuman senses and intuition, with insight rivaling that of superhuman psychics, making him a valuable source of counsel, and the lesser-known ability to remain still and fade from view (and memory!) becoming not merely unseen, but also completely forgotten, allowing him to quietly observe matters which he was not invited to observe. Members of the Serpent tribe have a bit of a reputation as shifty and manipulative, and sometimes play up to that reputation, remaining silent when they do not fully understand the situation, and allowing others to assume that they know more than they do.

The Vulture tribe is a smaller than normal tribe, having few children and tending to take up roles in teaching, counseling, medicine, religious leadership, or, most thematically, funerary or mortuary roles, as befits their totems relationship with death. They tend to have morbid senses of humor, and be unusually (and sometimes inappropriately) cheerful, with a love of energetic dance, strong drink, cigars and sensuality, as if their association with death makes them want to live their lives to the fullest. Their champion, Nasira Uqabi, has the ability to fly, generally slowly, although she can dive with great speed, on ragged wings that appear to be made of blue-tinged shadow and appear at her silent call, to transmit wounds inflicted upon her person to others, and to 'sense death').

The Hyena tribe and the Thunder tribe's stories are intertwined, as the Hyena tribe was a matriarchal clan, which only admitted female members. A Hyena woman would marry a man of any other tribe, and if their child was a boy, it would be of the fathers tribe, and if a girl, of the Hyena tribe. This served them well for a thousand years, but a fight between a husband of the Thunder tribe, whose totem was the spirit of Vibranium itself, fought with his Hyena bride, and complained to his brother, the current Thunder tribe champion, who meddled in this marital dispute, leading to the Hyena tribe champion also getting involved, and the conflict becoming violent, as the two overproud champions came to blows, and the Hyena tribe champion handing the Thunder tribe champion a humiliating and public defeat. The Hyena tribe champion was found poisoned to death two days later, and an intertribal civil war erupted, as Hyena tribeswomen struck back, and Thunder tribesfolk returned force for force, with members of a half-dozen other tribes (generally the husbands of Hyena tribe wives) also getting involved, either to defend their wives, or attacked because their wives were believed to be involved in attacks on Thunder tribe). It took two weeks to bring the situation under control, but the damage had been done, with most of the Hyena tribe lost, and the Thunder tribe being banned from Wakanda, sent into exile by King T'Chaka.

A small number asked to remain, renouncing their birth tribe, and reforming later as the 'Iron Tribe,' and T'Chaka allowed them to remain, under the leadership of the same man whose marital dispute (and hot-headed Thunder tribe Champion brother) had caused the entire situation to escalate in the first place. Some questioned the wisdom of this leniency, but T'Chaka reasoned that this conflict had already cost him his wife, his tribe and his brother, and that heaping further punishment upon him, over what the gods had already decreed, would be vengeance, not justice.

That man's daughter, who would have been Hyena tribe, had her mother survived the tribal conflict, has found a new totem, and is now the Iron tribe Champion, with skin and muscles as strong as iron.

[The Thunder tribe champion could absorb sudden impacts, and use them to 'call thunder to his fists,' charging up his own punches with the energy of forces striking his body. The Hyena tribe champion had superhuman endurance and toughness, and superhuman strength mainly concentrated in her hands, allowing her to crush stones in her fist. Unable to punch the Thunder tribe Champion without giving him power to strike her back with her own strength, she gripped him by the throat and slowly throttled him into unconsciousness, relentlessly ignoring his own punches by dint of sheer stubbornness. While clever, and effective, it unfortunately led to the proud Thunder tribe Champion overreacting, and the decimation of both tribes...]

In the modern day, the Serpent tribe champion remains advisor-to-Kings, and does not 'superhero.' The Vulture tribe champion only takes to the sky to address supernatural threats to Wakanda (which are more common than most realize), functioning as a low-level 'Sorcerer Supreme' sort of figure, although with more of a 'Ghost Rider' motif.

The Iron tribe champion, Oyo Nyogu, called Bamana or 'Iron Woman,' on the other hand, is quite active, as her tribe is still 'new' by the standards of the older tribes, and has much to prove before it has any real say in the matters of tribal politics, having inherited none of the centuries worth of favor the Thunder and Hyena clans had accrued, and sometimes feeling like second-class citizens in their own country. By keeping active and being seen as a hero, not just for her own tribe, but for all Wakandans, even those who have, in the modern day, abandoned tribal politics entirely, she hopes to bridge the gap and make a difference, regardless of what people think of her, or her tribe, or their unfortunate history.

Good ones, Set, as usual! I don't particularly enjoy creating new characters (probably because I'm too lazy to think up of good backstories), but you make it seem like so much fun. Keep 'em coming!

Heather Tucker, aka Tempo, of the ill-fated 'Mutant Liberation Front,' found herself drawn into a war for survival, in a world that hates and fears mutants like herself.

The leader of their movement, a charismatic man who claimed to come from a future where their kind where herded into camps, branded, and, all-too often, murdered in great numbers, played to her fears perfectly, and equipped her with a fantastic suit of golden armor that was bullet-proof, and equipped with some sort of anti-gravity elements that allowed her to fly.

Combined with her unrefined mutant ability, to accelerate the speed of her allies, at the cost of fatiguing them afterwards, she operated as a 'mutant freedom fighter' for a time, before being beaten back one time too many, and recognizing her actions as those of a terrorist, not a 'freedom fighter,' during one of her stints in captivity.

Her armor long gone, since, unlike every other super-villain she'd worked with, it seems, the authorities didn't pack her equipment in a room just outside her cell for her to collect during her breakout, and Stryfe nowhere to be found to provide a replacement, Heather felt a bit too vulnerable and exposed to be 'super-adventuring' without it.

Forced to rely more heavily on her own mutant powers to get by, without Stryfe's high-tech gear or pet teleporter, Heather learned that she didn't have to just steal time from the future, but could 'bank' it for later, stealing it from the now, to use in the future. More usefully, she didn't have to steal it from herself, or the person she was accelerating. With concentration, and an unresisting target (such as someone asleep or in the depths of some drug-induced episode), she could 'steal time' from them, causing them to fall into a form of stasis where they only experienced a tenth, or even a hundredth of the passage of time, while using that stolen temporal energy to enhance herself (or a third party) without the 'crash' that usually followed such an acceleration.

And so now, avoiding superhuman conflict entirely, she operates as a 'speed broker.' She has a dozen flunkies, mostly gathered off of the street, whom she steals time from, leaving them practically comatose, and then she sells that time as boosts of acceleration to others, who generally use them to commit crimes with brief boosts of temporary super-speed, using the temporal energy she has stolen from her 'volunteers.'

Because she is generally 'charged up' with stolen temporal energy, she is also more than capable of hyper-accelerating herself and her two bodyguards, one a human gunman, the other a mildly super-strong mutant fond of using a chain or iron bar in a fight, so that they can cover her retreat at many times normal speed, while she disappears in a blur, willing to leave this setup behind and set up shop later somewhere else. (She has a deal to break them out if they get captured, in this process, and intends to make good on it, since good help is hard to find.)

Yeah, even characters invented by Rob Liefield are not immune to my crazy ideas at rehabilitating them into usable story elements!

Thanks!

Wakanda just seemed like a partially developed gold mine for ideas. Thanks to Man-Ape, we know that the Panther tribe is not the only game in town, for Wakandan tribes, and tribes with superhuman Champions, so I wanted to play around with that, while sticking to African themed creatures / forces. (Such as hyenas and cobras and thunder and iron, all popular elements in Bantu / Yoruba faith and folklore.)

Same with Animalia/Fauna/'Doctor Beth,' tapping into the High Evolutionary and his 'New Men.' An entire European team could be fielded based on these New Men, at least some of whom (the Mongoose, for instance) were more than just animal/man hybrids or anthropomorphic animals, but had actual super-powers that fit their animal themes.

One thing I would have loved is if, during the Invaders, they'd met WW2 individuals from Wakanda, such as T'Challa's grandfather (or grandmother? No reason every ruler of Wakanda has to be a King, after all! Or even a member of the Panther tribe!), or even Dr. Doom's rarely-mentioned father or grandfather, who might have been an imperious pain in the butt, but also a powerful ally against the Nazis!

Or, totally off the wall, Doom's witch mother, working as a Sorceress, against Nazi Thulian occultists, as a secret member of the Invaders! Perhaps her getting sucked into Hell had less to do with her own actions, and more to do with the actions of her Nazi enemies?

What a way to tie some modern day Marvel Universe stuff back into Invaders continuity! A Wakandan Invader? Doom's mom as team sorceress? Perhaps an armored tunneling figure who is later revealed to be a Moloid or Subterranean? A martial artist from K'un Lun, helping to push back the invasion of China?

The New 'Sons of the Dragon.' (No relation to the old Sons of the Dragon, which just a bunch of people wearing fragments of White Tigers amulet.) (They don't call themselves the 'Sons' of anything, being half women. 'Dragon Soldiers' might be a better translation of their name for themselves, but they didn't get to pick what the newspapers called them...)

Iron Fist encounters, over the course of several months adventures, three different martial artists, all obviously trained in K'un L'un, and wearing variations on his costume, in different colors, and with different tattoos.

Huang Shan Shu, aka the Blue Butterfly, has a very graceful style of fighting, concentrating on high kicks, and, even when not calling upon her unique chi abilities, seems to spend more time 'in the air' than on the ground, sometimes even stepping on an opponents back or shoulder to remain above them, raining blows down upon them. When she calls upon her chi, adopting what she calls her 'Cloud Serpent Stance,' planes of azure force trail from her arms, shoulders and back, and can strike with crushing force, block gunfire or similar powerful attacks, or propel her into the air, serving as wings. Much like Daniel Rand's 'iron fist,' calling upon her chi in this manner is taxing, and she prefers to rely on her 'mundane' martial arts skills, which are quite sufficient to see her through combat with even skilled martial artists larger and stronger than herself.

Leung Tu Fang, aka Molten Heart adopts a more forceful style, more brutal, and adopting elements of a dozen different styles, similar to syncretic styles such as Jeet Kune Do, or more pragmatic styles such as Krav Maga, or the nameless styles taught in military academies, than any of the more ancient and artistic styles of mainland China. Spitting forth the 'Six Fiery Invectives,' which he claims to have spent years learning to ink upon parchment, and then swallowed to internalize their power, Fang calls upon his chi to spit forth gouts of fire, from a tiny spark sufficient to light a match or ignite a piece of paper, to a vast torrent that can immolate a man whole. He also finds this taxing, and yet is more likely to 'show off,' than actually use the effect in a fight with a non-superhuman combatant, as he finds the notion of burning people with his chi to be 'spiritually polluting.' (Although it doesn't seem to bother him to beat someone halfway to death with his fists, oddly...)

Soon Lan is perhaps somewhat 'thickly built' for a superhero martial artist, and practices a 'soft' defensive style of Wing Chun kung fu, using a spear or staff, or silk ropes, or rope darts, or even flaming poi, depending on what is available, in addition to parrying and deflecting and evading attacks with maddening ease, frustrating more offensive foes with how effortlessly she seems able to counter their strikes. Jade Tortoise she is sometimes called, but doesn't claim such a name on her own, and speaks rarely, in any event. (Her English is not so good, and she would rather smile and bow and be thought wise and patient and mysterious, than open her mouth and stutter and 'blow it'). When she calls upon her chi, her 'Jade Shield,' it manifests as a dark green hemisphere of force that appears to be invulnerable to any force yet directed against it, and she can even cause it to form into a dome that covers herself and several others, although it is clearly draining to her to maintain it for more than a few seconds, and she tends to use it sparingly, to counter effects that her own abilities cannot protect her against (such as an explosion, or a bullet), as it appears with supernatural swiftness, some would say, far too quickly, as she would not consciously be able to erect it in time to stop a bullet, for instance, and yet, clearly, she can.

Iron Fist meets these other chi-empowered K'un L'un trained martial artists when they all find themselves the targets of assassins, members of the Hand, whom they discover to have been hired by someone from K'un L'un itself! About this time, they also discover their unique gifts to be fading, with the Iron Fist, Six Fiery Invectives, Jade Shield and Cloud Serpent Stance failing to come at their masters call.

Travelling to K'un L'un, these four powerless, and yet utterly competent and effective, martial artists confront the Caretaker, who has stolen their powers, and bound the dragon Shou-Lao who is the source of them all, with the Iron Fist representing his metal-hard claws, the Six Fiery Invectives his burning breath, the Cloud Serpent Stance his mighty wings, and the Jade Shield his impenetrable scales.

Consumed with his ritual to bind the dragon itself to his service, so that he can steal it's life-force to become immortal, the Caretaker animates terra cotta soldiers to hold back the martial artists, but they fight their way through these mindless minions to interrupt his ritual.

The Caretaker, with all four powers, attempts to kill the four martial artists, to ensure that the powers will remain his for all time, but is less experienced with them and weakens himself by calling upon them too much, and finds himself in a much harder fight than he had expected...

If they defeat the Caretaker and rescue Shou-Lao, who knows what adventures await the Dragon Soldiers?

Oooh. I like your ideas for these new Dragon Soldiers. I could certainly see myself reading about them!