Apr19
Okay. Just to keep the story going I’m throwing up a half sketch half inked page. I’ve “named” the characters in the sketchy panel so you know who’s who.
Also if you refresh the previous page, there’s a bit of re-con done, which is the guy Beetle is talking about: Dr. Hormone.
Dr. Hormone?! The names they came up with back in the day… 😀 Real character though.
-Scott-
Did you mean “Dr. Hormone?!” Just asking.
So is Dr. H different form The Rodent or are they the same guy??
Yeah fixed that. Beetle is referring to a character ret-conned into the previous page’s discussion.
Not the same guy as Rodent. He was more of a hands on type of guy. Not scientist material.
Dont you mean claws-on type of person ?
That too.
Did Beetle get any benefit out of the Nazi tests? It would be a great origin for Archie having gotten an extra power.
Who is Merryweather? Blue Feather? Sorry, without a character page and only seeing the story in progress once a week, I’m lost. But that is my problem and a limitation of your chosen format, until you are done. But you do have a lot of balls in the air at one time. Granted, that lets you tell a deeper story and more realistic too, but not knowing what the characters know is a 2 way artistic tool. You can build up tension for the reader, but you can also confuse us.
“That path” meaning pursing the same science, the same Nazi style destructive testing, contacting the evil scientists, contacting Merryweather, shoving their plans in Beetle’s face, or all of the above?
Takahachi just went down a notch in my opinion by parroting pragmatism ends justifies the means in a business devoted to crime fighting. They are not even patrioticaly trying to win a war at this point. They sit in a flying castle and are discussing human experiments for $ instead of any other solution. What is so important that Archie is going along with the likes of White Suit? Hmm, maybe a Dealgo will break through a window and kill White Suit, if there is poetic justice in the world.
Why does Heros Inc need DNA and Nazi scientist when they have Archie, one of our scientist on the original project, right there? Did the USA lose all it’s super soldier records and equipment? And why isn’t the US government helping out? It is almost like an independent contractor is trying to rebuild a nuke from scratch while the government stands idly by. Oh, and by the way, refine your own Uranium thank you very much.
I find your sketching fascinating. You really draw the box with centerlines for the heads each time first? You have skill and vision.
Gonna toss my two cents in here.
It seems to me that in WWII the supers were like a cross between James Bond and Tier One/Delta Force/Green Beret. Ergo most of their actions would have been classified. In our world we are still only just learning about military research projects and operations that happened over 65 years ago.
They may want the crazy Nazi because they believe that he may have found different/better methods of creating meta-humans.
In the first issue, there is a Frenchman watching a news report about a “Free Britannia” terrorist/freedom fighter turning into the human torch on camera. He dismissed it as “Hollywood special effects”. This would suggest that at least one generation has grown up without superheroes running around.
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that what ever destroyed the American meta program also destroyed Germany’s, as well as any other active meta program in the world. It was an event so horrible that most governments seem to have worked really hard at forgetting that they ever created meta-humans. Whatever this calamity was, it seems to have either killed or forced into hiding just about all meta-humans in the world. Those that remain active seem to have to work in the shadows. It seems to have been so bad that is took over 60 years for anyone to publicly produce one, and even then it is only to combat the rise of “natural” meta-humans.
Just some of my ramblings.
@Warsmith Bob: Yeah I get the calamity that ended WWII and made the remaining supers hide only to deal with other supers bit too, but if it was so bad, as Lawrence seemed to imply, then why risk it just to deal with crooks? Except if you have super powered crooks, the cat is out of the bag anyway. But Archie and Heros Inc seemed to be starting a bit before the current batch of super crooks. My theory is still Aliens imposed a Not Yet on the planet back in WWII and Archie is somewhat secretly trying to prepare the USA for the planet’s eventual breakout and the need to say Yes Now back to the Aliens and survive. I also think that evil scientist crooks don’t care about the last ultimatum/disaster and are a more likely cause of the new super crooks than nature alone.
We did see most of Manhattan gone in 2 strikes. Could have been nukes, could have been rocks from above, or could have been 1 nasty super. That can make a lot of scientists and equipment vaporize. Benton could be mistaken in thinking the Jappanese were the only party to reign us in. So, Archie, the USA beheind him in the shadows, and Heros Inc all are reduced to finding the last evil scientists who may also be crooks that have been in hiding for 60 years because our science, DNA, and equipment is no longer up to the task? Reminds me a tiny bit of “Footfall” by Larry Niven with less success at creating the weapon to fight back.
Maybe instead of aliens there was a critical mass super who was super bad, very powerfull, and did lots of damage before being knocked down/asleep only to be on the cusp of comming back again. Aliens on the other hand could mind wipe a select few scientists that survived the attention getting calamity. Or the evil scientists who escaped the calamity have needed all of this time and income from petty crime to get their eqipment and experiments back up to snuff. Or some combination or something different. 😉
You should write comics! 😀
Hi Warsmith Bob, you supposed that the meta humans could have been classified.
Maybe it hasn’t any thing to do with, but this special forces of WWII was also classified and did an interesting job.
I could imagine that Archie & Co did their work very similar… 🙂
http://www.ghostarmy.org
@TheTechnical Beetle’s origin will be touched upon soon. As for a character page… on the to-do list, but you can check out almost every character I use here. These are the originals and I made SOME changes to some of them.
Archie was part of the scientist team back in the day, but he wasn’t THE scientist. The government doesn’t have the knowledge to do it on their own for reasons that will be revealed later. For the same reasons Heroes,inc is having troubles with their tests. Archie agreed to go alaong with Heroes,inc. because he wanted to keep the governments hands off of superheroes, however it’s starting to look like Heroes, inc might not be the best solution either…
By “going down that path” he means using Dr. Hormone’s experiments and techniques. What were they? Weird stuff.
And also Diana’s willingness to be part of this might stress her relationship with Archie…
@Warsmith Bob Your ramblings are pretty close. Oh except the human torch thing, but that’s my fault. Looking back I can see that I kind of left that open as to what really happened. He didn’t just turn into a human torch, he EXPLODED! 😯 A human bomb.
Superheroes are kind of urban myths and legends. So yeah, something happened that made them go away. And YES we will see what that was. 😉
So the “Human Torch” guy was more of a “Nitro” guy then? Actually, I think that that was my impression, that he was similar to “Nitro” who just so happened to kick off a war of his own (Marvel’s Civil War anyone).
There were/are more than one actually. Human bombs.
Is CatMan your Merryweather? http://pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Cat-Man If so, that is yet another character.
That’s him. His origin story is different in the Heroes,inc. verse though. Dr. Hormone had his fingers in it…
Oh you sly dog…
and I bet “Atomic Rabbit” shows up as an early test subject gone terribly WRONG !!!
Your story is awesome, granted it has become a bit cumbersome to keep score.
I guess I’ll just have to go back and read from the beginning to fill in the blanks.
To quote Mel Brooks in “Blazing Saddles- “Work, work, work” 😉
Reading from the beginning never hurts. I do it myself from time to time. 😉
Whoops, there’s a your=you’re typo on this page (2nd panel)
Interesting comments on this page 🙂