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[death tribble]

Ultra Violet

 

Sarah Page was Ultra Violet. Her power was to make people become violent towards each other and not her. She wore a bullet proof outfit that stops her from being hurt and taken out by a stray bullet or targeted gunfire. Unusually she is not the leader or the most egotistical as she is careful with her mental powers. Overconfident men are often the victims of her power. She prefers not to kill but to leave her victims with guilt over what they have done or not done. There is no record of her post the millennium

[Lorehunter]

I agree but the public relations portion of Cryptic felt it was too closely linked to the antics of a certain group of idiots in the mid to late 1940s. Even after I tried to explain they still felt the was a large enough portion of the populace that might take exception that they were unwilling to risk it. So she became Creeping Lotus which was even funnier since her travel power was super speed.

4 hours ago, Opal said:

I think it's an awesome name, and just right for the tone of the group.

 

[Opal]

3 hours ago, Lorehunter said:

I agree but the public relations portion of Cryptic felt it was too closely linked to the antics of a certain group of idiots in the mid to late 1940s. Even after I tried to explain they still felt the was a large enough portion of the populace that might take exception that they were unwilling to risk it. So she became Creeping Lotus which was even funnier since her travel power was super speed.

Admirers of that certain group of idiots would like to deny the particular antics indirectly referenced by the pun, so that's a tad ironic.

 

And the oblique reference to Poison Ivy was lost, too.   You could have hit that one harder and just swapped it around to Caustic Holly, and give her an acerbic wit, as well as acid powers.   Or, just too on the nose, Toxic Holly.

 

(the more I think about it, the more I like the concept)

[Lorehunter]

13 hours ago, Opal said:

Admirers of that certain group of idiots would like to deny the particular antics indirectly referenced by the pun, so that's a tad ironic.

 

And the oblique reference to Poison Ivy was lost, too.   You could have hit that one harder and just swapped it around to Caustic Holly, and give her an acerbic wit, as well as acid powers.   Or, just too on the nose, Toxic Holly.

 

(the more I think about it, the more I like the concept)

Argh!!! Didn't think of that! Would have been much better. Alas but that hindsight has such good perception.😎

Also we should stop this as we are dragging the thread farther and farther afield.

[death tribble]

The brick of the group is Mary Gold

She was a member of the Black Panthers and wore the beret and leather jacket. She also had shades and lots of gold, earrings, teeth, rings and teeth. She really enjoyed punching people. Although she and Lily White came out of the same background they did not try and associate and tended to work separately if they could. She could take being shot multiple times and could walk through a beating that would kill anyone else. Being hit by cars or trucks would also cause her no problem.

She ended up in prison and was released having served her time despite protests. There was a high profile campaign equally to get her released.

 

That makes a brick, mentalist, speedster, martial artist, energy projector and other (plant powers). If Opal is content that this is ok, we'll do a new team. 

[Opal]

5 hours ago, death tribble said:

That makes a brick, mentalist, speedster, martial artist, energy projector and other (plant powers). If Opal is content that this is ok, we'll do a new team. 

 

Yep that covers it, what's next, death tribble?

 

Spoiler

Flower Power in my old game was already a little retro, a 70s style villain team in the mid 80s.  The lineup  was:

 

Snapdragon - as above, a reptillian-serum mutate pyrokinetic hippie-terrorist.

Black Lotus - A 'red' Chinese agent provocateur, the team egoist (because it was that long ago, mentalist came later), her powers centered on illusions, images re-enforced with mental illusions that affect all who see them or dreamscaping specific targets with more potent mental illusions, she could induce sleep and use other conventional mental powers, like ego attack, but illusions were her jam.  Black Lotus was very beautiful/seductive, but that was also an illusion, though one that almost never dropped.  After Deng Xiaoping liberalized China's economy, Black Lotus disappeared from the American supervillain scene.  But, a more elderly ethnic Chinese villainess displaying mental powers has since appeared working with The Shining Path in Peru.

Violent Violet - Born obviously mutated, Violet was abused by her father from birth, when he found he couldn't hurt her much, he turned his attention on her mother, and, before she was six, killed her.  Some years later, she strangled her father to death.  She took quickly to a life of crime, but could not stand up to heavy-hitting superheroes (and wasn't bullet-proof, just tough) so she sought out WITCH and gained a partial suit of armor with force-field generator and powered gauntlets that let her grapple with the strongest bricks (OK, not Grond, but the stronger heroes).  While some mutants age more slowly than normal humans Violet had the opposite problem, she matured quickly but also aged quickly, she died in prison sometime in the 90s.

Orange Blossom Special - The group speedster, she could run at over 120 mph, and build up physical resilience as well as speed as she accelerated.  She had orange-red hair, and a full-body-covering orange & white costume with a western theme.  She was easily the least vicious of the team and eventually reformed, becoming a high-end messenger, spokesmodel, and briefly, Texan superhero.

Atropa Belladonna - The group martial artist, a swordswoman who also threw poisoned darts.  She was a legacy supervillain, her mother had been the Roman-themed super-assassin Bella Donna ("beautiful lady," no poisons, she killed with gladius & pilii) working directly for Mussolini in WWII, and a failed (disqualified as a mutant) Olympic javelin-thrower afterwards, she passed her broad mutant superiority (all primary stats over 20), martial skill, and vindictive bitterness to her daughter.  After receiving multiple life sentence, she was paroled in a secret suicide-squad-style program, her current whereabouts, assignment, and even whether she's alive, are all classified.

Dandy Lion - The group's non-combatant gadgeteer, he would distribute his gold-toned gadgets to the team for use in jobs, and otherwise generally kept up their gear, maintained the base, cooked, cleaned, provided medical care for and generally worried about them.   He was rarely seen and it was debated whether he was a leonine mutant or just wore a mask.  His costume was a cranberry red turn-of-the-last-century suit with lots of lace & ruffles.  Rumor has it he cooperated with the authorities and got witness protection, but there's no record of him testifying.

 

 

[death tribble]

New Team: Teen Bandits

 

This is an historical team that got its start in the late 60s and early 70s before cynicism kicked fun out of villainy and heroism.

They are at least 15 years old (when the team started) and retired or moved on to other teams when they reached 20. If they were not captured or killed.

Minimum 5. Can be male or female.

Any powers but not Superman class as the powers should still be developing.

At least one should be a flyer.

No psychotic killers or callous disregard for civilians or property damage (well at least while they were members of the team) 

Optional you can say what happened to them,.

[steriaca]

The Unmovable Kid

 

Brandon Backton developed the ability to anchor himself in space, allowing him to stop movement for himself. He floats in the air after a jump and can not be moved if he doesn't want to be moved. Generally Brandon uses his powers to become either a platform or a blockade.

 

Eventually he developed the ability to bounce attacks back at his opponent (both ranged and hand-to-hand damage). He discarded his original villain name in favor of Bounceback.

 

Note: this is not true flight. So that is still available.

[Sundog]

Spindizzy

 

Lee Camaran was a thief, a runner for the mob, and a con artist. When she got drenched in radioactive waste and developed superspeed powers, she just kept doing the same things - faster. Eventually she got recruited for the Teen Bandits, and had a lot of fun.

Sadly, radioactive waste is bad way to get powers. Lee developed skin cancer in 1975, then liver cancer, then Leukemia. She was dead by '77.

[death tribble]

Kid Rocket

 

The poster boy for the group was Michael 'Mickey D' Sanders who was Kid Rocket. He could fly very fast but gradually developed more control so he could do all sorts of fancy moves. He had a long term rivalry with the teen hero Rocket Kid. Unusually Mickey never spent a night in prison or in custody as he was either able to get away or was released. He got on well with all members of the team when he was a member. He never killed anyone while a member of the team and could be counted on to act as an aerial ambulance for any team mate that was hurt.

 

What happened after he left the team is not clear with all sorts of rumours concerning drug addiction, murder and other nefarious acts none of which have ever been proven. What is certain is that he was killed in 1995 during the American Protector's reign of terror in California following the latter's infamous attacks on the competitors in the Chicago-San Francisco run. The hero had a long memory and knew that Mickey had not spent time in prison. Fine he could pay with his life instead. The Protector caught up with Mickey in San Diego and repeatedly stunned him before repeatedly smashing Mickey's face into the sides of naval vessels in the harbour. What was left of the body was recovered several weeks later and identifies from DNA and fingerprints as there was no face left and no teeth. No charges were ever brought against the hero as there were no witnesses.

 

[Opal]

On 4/21/2021 at 4:32 AM, death tribble said:

New Team: Teen Bandits

 

This is an historical team that got its start in the late 60s and early 70s before cynicism kicked fun out of villainy and heroism.

You know that the 'civil unrest' America just went through last year (and isn't exactly over) was pretty much an instant replay of the late 60s and early 70s?  Maybe the media did a better job of minimizing (or not dwelling on, if you prefer) how effed up society was at the time when producing content for kids, like the '66 Batman, which, though it featured the odd (very odd) hippie, didn't feature them being shot by national guardsmen.  So, yeah, OK, a happy fluffy fictional 60s & 70s villainy, more so than Flower Power (which was silly, but vicious).  

 

Psiclone

 

Cindy-Lee Jennison did not have it easy growing up, her father died in Korea, his family was poor and couldn't help her mother out much, though, at least, they had extended family, and, really, the whole town was pretty poor, so she wasn't always aware of how bad things were.  When she suddenly started doing much better in school, right around puberty - it was almost like she could see the answers to tests floating around or hear them whispered - she skipped grades, received a scholarship and went off to a big-city college at the tender age of 16 (though that was young enough to get married in her home state).  That's when she discovered a number of things, that compared to even a college student, everyone she'd ever know was dirt poor, that even though she passed for white it was still evident everyone looked down at her for her accent and lower class upbringing, and that a little money or drugs or the right clothes and lingo could suddenly make up for that, and, again, some of those things just came to her.  

Her success eased by her subtle  telepathic powers as it was, it still wasn't enough to save her from some embarrassing and even dangerous situations, when things went bad at a frat party, her telekinetic powers manifested, creating a vortex of poltergeist activity, under cover of which she got away unmolested.  After that, though, she didn't feel she could return to school, and she sought out other 'freaks' like herself, eventually falling in with the Teen Bandits.

As Psiclone, she learned to control her TK to a degree, it still manifested as a vortex rather than grabbing a specific individual or item, she could invoke or dismiss it more or less at will, though stress would bring it on if she didn't concentrate on dampening it.  She gained greater control of her telepathy, and was able to use it to sense hostility and thus avoid attacks, coordinate with her team, and even contact well-known minds from a great distance.  In her time with the Teen Bandits she first wore an all-black beatnik-style costume complete with a beret over her straightened hair and large-frame dark glasses, and later changed to an all-white, also full-coverage but looser, outfit tie-died with different patterns & colors each job, an actual mask and left her hair curly, but cut it short.  Her poltergeist-like TK vortex served admirably to create distractions while the team pulled their jobs.

After leaving the Bandits, she worked on her own or with other mental-powered villains, apparently considering telepathy a key to trust.  Her costume changed again, to bell-bottoms and a top hand-crocheted from ballistic nylon (which turned out not to be a very effective at stopping bullets).  She was eventually apprehended, and did a few years in prison before escaping (it turned out the drugs they gave her suppressed her TK completely, but her telepathy slowly returned, and she was able to make subtle use of it to trick her guards).

In the 80s she returned to crime, this time working with a larger group of psionics & mutants (in my campaign it would have been "Double-Helix" but I think there may have been a CU agent-group like that?) who considered themselves the next stage in human evolution.  She somehow picked up a set of crystalline-looking armor complete with partial-face-covering helmet that was able to stand up to most attacks and finally learned to focus her TK selectively against one target at a time.  Even so, she was not a match for the Minutemen robots, and was eventually killed by GENOCIDE, ending a 20-year villainous career spanning 3 decades.  

In the 21st century, a blogger dug up her identity, found a black great-grandparent in her family tree, researched her career, and promoted her as a martyr, forced into a life of crime by poverty & intolerance, yet avoiding ever killing anyone and using her ill-gotten gains to help the needy (the evidence on that was pretty sparse, but the Robin Hood narrative is always sympathetic), until hatefully murdered by an organization that chose it's name with uncharacteristic honesty.  Today, Cindy-Lee Jennison's posterized face adorns T-shirts and protests signs - and is regularly mocked in right-wing memes on reddit.

 

(I just couldn't keep it light, sorry)

 

 

 

 

[death tribble]

Don't worry Opal. Sometimes we do too little. It is nice to be faced with the opposite problem. 

 

Heart Throb 

This good looking guy could melt most women with his charm and he kept up a strenuous physical fitness regime in order to keep his schtick working for him. He could make most women do anything for him which does not really work in a combat situation. He was very careful with his team mates but not the police and law enforcement nor with the Underworld and this is what allegedly led to his downfall. When he was caught he went down for a long time, far longer than any of his team mates and far longer than any of his crimes warranted. He dies in a prison riot and it has never been ascertained whether it was the inmates or the guards who killed him.

He was skilled in acting, disguise and knew a little judo.

 

We have got through the minimum so the next person to post a member can select a new team.

[Sundog]

Silver Queen

 

Bryn Albusdotter was born to wealth, and her father's bankruptcy in her fifteenth year devastated her. For a year she had to live without the trappings of wealth and privilege - and she truly hated it. 

So when her mutant ability to psychokinetically control metals manifested, she went wild. Steel bank vaults were more of an impediment to those who wanted to stop her then they were to her, and her prodigious intellect kept her imagining newer and more useful ways to use her abilities. When she joined up with the Teen Bandits, she just kept raking in the loot. Not that she was greedy - she always made sure her friends got their fair share - but for Bryn, wealth was it's own reward.

It all came to an end in late 1977. She was considering retiring anyway - Spindizzy's death hit her hard - and she had millions in untraceable accounts across the globe. Then a shock jock radio host worked out her secret identity. In days, a mob hit team had killed both of her parents and tried to kill her - she hadn't even known that one of the banks she robbed was a mob front. 

Over the next month, 250 mob members were slaughtered. Bryn caught up with the Shock Jock during an interview on public television, and casually ripped all of the blood out of his body.

The manhunt for Silver Queen was extensive...and futile. She simply vanished. Many believe she has gone somewhere quiet in the world, enjoying her money and laughing at the law.

 

New Team: The Capitalists. A group of conservative individuals using their power to promote the free market...by silencing any detractors. 5-7 members.

[Opal]

Anne Cap

 

Aisha Renault got her last name from an alias her father happened to be using when he married her mother, she never met her father, but it turned out he walked a not particularly fine line between business man and con artist, making and losing several fortunes in his lifetime.  It just so happened that he died, while she was in college on a scholarship, and before he had managed to lose that last fortune he'd made.  Suddenly wealthy, Aisha changed her major from social & gender studies to Finance & Econ, and her preferred reading from Marx to Rand.  But, she didn't change her innately radical approach to school or politics, and when she got in an ironic shouting match with a red-headed boy at a counter-protest, he suddenly burst into flames and blasted her through a parked car.  To everyone's surprise, she stood up, a jet black silhouette, and threw what was left of the car at him.  Fortunately, exactly what she had looked like before the blast wasn't caught on camera, and witnesses were pretty traumatized, so she was able to keep a super and normal IDs separate.

It turned out Aisha had long had unmanifested mutant powers, the ability to absorb energy, particularly visible light, and transform it into kinetic energy within her own body.  A normal day of sun bathing makes her about as strong as a typical low-end brick through the night.  Absorbing energy attacks from supers tops her up considerably.   During the day, she wears a yellow bikini, gloves & boots - and the one signature element of her costume, a yellow fedora - for maximum sun exposure, but in doors, at night, or when activities call for it, she'll opt for a pants suit, trench coat, or whatever gear is practical, though always in yellow & black.  However she's dressed, she looks very different 'powered up' in super-mode (not actively suppressing her powers) her skin goes from somewhat light milk-chocolate, to deep ebony, and, as she exerts her powers, to unnatural light-drinking jet black, she also appears to elongate, becoming taller and, well, still not exactly thin.  Her costume also goes black as she absorbs powerful energy attacks, and at her maximum activity she begins to generate a field of actual darkness - though it's a toss up whether absorbing that many energy attacks will knock her out, first.  When actively suppressing her powers to maintain her secret ID, Aisha is short (155cm), light-skinned, and, well, wouldn't be caught dead in a bikini (she admits to 90kg).  Nor is changing IDs convenient.  It takes her a full day of sunbathing, or 6 hours in an intense UV chamber to power up, and at least an hour in total darkness (hastened by exerting maximum strength) to 'power-down' to the point she can suppress her powers and resume a normal appearance.

Obviously from her name and costume, Anne Cap is the anarcho-capitalist of the group, making even libertarians and Randroids cringe with her radical take on what constitutes free markets.  (hint, there's no place for drug laws, police, prisons, nor even nation-states, in /her/ capitalist utopia)

As a rich businesswoman, almost as honest and much more successful than her father, Aisha prominently supports sympathetic radical movements, and secretly funnels resources to less sympathetic ones, including outright terrorists who conform to her ideals (when she can find some).  As a supervillain (though, of course, she sees herself as a willful individualist hero, misunderstood by the collectivism-addicted masses), Anne Cap prefers to show up for full-scale knock-down drag-outs vs other supers, both because she likes to see herself as the team's heavy-hitter, and because her powers are just more effective against supers or raygun-toting agents than ordinary people.

She'll also pick a fight with any energy projector she thinks her powers give her a better than fair chance against, because it's a rush to power-up to her limit.  Maybe some day she'll take on Firewing.

 

 

[death tribble]

Bull Run

 

If you can have these ruddy anarchists like Rage Against the Machine disrupting the New York Stock Exchange surely you can have people supporting the market and stamping on these Commies ? This is the philosophy of Bull Run who is a speedster. He believes that making money is good and that the market can run itself. Obviously people like Boesky have to be stopped but market raiding using junk bonds is ok. He wears a padded suit to stop bullets from killing him as he found to his cost that he can be slowed down and hit by the cops for example. He uses specially designed gloves to allow him to hit people at speed but not with a multiple punch like a boxer could do although he can run around a person hitting them.

Dervon Weston was given his costume etc through ARGENT but why him and why he chooses to do it is unknown. He is a bit of a Civil War buff which accounts for the name.

[Opal]

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the layered puns and unfortunate references in that name.   Perfect for a villain.

[Opal]

Atom Smith

 

Conceived in the closing days of WWII for use in an anticipated atomic war in Europe, the idea was to combine the armor & firepower of a tank with the mobility and versatility of infantry, the result was one of the earliest powered-armor suits, a very heavy fission-powered affair that proved impractical to mass produce but saw limited success as a military-sponsored super-hero battling giant monsters and other threats.  It was not popular with the press nor the anti-war and anti-nuke crowds and was decommissioned in 70s, declassified in the 90s, and quietly scrapped and sold piecemeal in the midst of the Great Recession.

Today, an obviously re-assembled, refurbished, & upgraded version (minus the missiles & tank gun) operates as a retro-patriotic arch-conservative supervillain.  With a 50's-style 'atom' design on his chest, and a scaled up blacksmith's hammer in hand, he uses the name, Atom Smith, a pun on Wealth of Nations author, Adam Smith.  While the armor is strong enough to handle it's own considerable bulk (2 levels of growth and several of DI), its primary power, obviously not part of its original design, is the seemingly ex-nillo creation of wrought-iron objects - walls, riveted plates, chains, manacles, wrecking balls, or whatever else suits the wearer's fancy, which he can then move about at will, apparently through some sort of magnetic control.

Since getting a lumbering piece of cold war junk working would require incredible resources, the general assumptions is that Atom Smith is some mad billionaire industrialist (though, most heavy industries are offshored and/or run by giant corporations, these days, so there's even a conspiracy theory that the armor is sponsored by China or Russia). 

 

As a bonus, chose the secret ID/origin you prefer:

Spoiler

Option one:

In actuality the pilot is a working-class ferrokinetic (able to use any psionic power, so long as the target is predominantly iron, that includes long-range aportation of familiar items, which explains the apparent creation of metal objects, in theory, it could include telepathy, if he ever encountered a sentient hunk of iron... oh, or an intelligent magic sword) who works in a Newark, NJ wrecking yard, collecting old parts he uses as a 'maker' of steampunk art, moonlights as a farrier shoeing rich people's horses, and holds some very dated political views.  In his mind, that a poor working stiff can get into an exclusive club like the Capitalists just shows what a great country America really is.  Of course, he hasn't actually told any of them that he's not a mad billionaire industrialist - they assume the way he talks and his evident lack of education is just a Bush-jr-style affectation.

 

Option two:

When stimulus money was being given out to doomed 'green energy' concerns like Solyndra, one of many denied applicants was a fringe-science inventor who claimed to have a 'nuclear battery' that could use fissionable material to generate economically practical electric current from a device as small as a pack of cigarettes.  Take it up to carton of cigarettes-sized and it could act as a breeder reactor.  Or, it could run on air!  However, in addition to obviously being way too into tobacco, he kept the miraculous invention a 'trade secret'  rather than register a patent or publish findings because "in the wrong hands it could .. DESTROY THE WORLD!"  So, yeah, DENIED.

He did, however, almost as miraculously, win a contract to dispose of old cold-war paranuclear materials, including the above armor, which he equipped with his power-source and went superheroing in (hero in his own mind, anyway).  What his invention actually does is perform a sort of controlled cold-fusion on any element lighter than iron, or 'cold fission' on anything heavier, thus it turns anything into slighlty lesser mass iron and yields energy.  The energy can be electric current, kinetic energy experienced by the newly-created material, or heat.  

 

Option 3:

Mad billionaire industrialist Grace Skunk, co-inventor of the wildly successful PrayPal app, most notorious for her Eddison line of gasoline-powered versions of common electronics, re-built and pilots the Atom Smith armor.  While it is just a giant piece of dated super-technology, the miraculous ability to create & control iron is a literal miracle, a matter of divine magic, the aggregate result of her millions of PrayPal users unwittingly requesting God grant her superpowers every time they use it. 

Or she could just be a delusional mutant or something, maybe something to do with all the hard radiation from the armor's 1950's nuclear pile.

(OK, yeah, I just couldn't make up my mind)

[death tribble]

The Bear

 

Thought to be a lycanthrope, The Bear is unleashed on any critics of The Capitalists. Otherwise it is kept away but heaven help any police officers or journalists or protestors who try to meddle in the affairs of the group as it will be set upon them. Normal gunfire does not seem to bother it in the slightest but it recoils from fire. It will however remember who used that power and will take revenge at a later date.

[Opal]

The Great Orange One

No one knows for sure whether the Great Orange One (or simply GOO) is a human mutated into a gigantic, comical, simian form, or an unfortunate orangutan cursed with superhuman strength, invulnerability, and the power of incoherent speech.  What is known is that the rampaging monster appeared suddenly on Jan 8, 2021, and invited itself to join The Capitalists, on the grounds that it was "the richest orange-furred primate in America," leaving aside that primates have hair, not fur, it was eventually, after much property damage, granted membership (by majority vote, the dissenting opinion is that it is an AntiFa thug undertaking a false flag operation - oh, if only), since that seemed to calm it down a bit.  It is evidentially anatomically neuter, and it's sentience has not been conclusively proven - it's banter may be the result of the biological equivalent of an Eliza program, albeit one designed specifically to offend anyone who engages it in conversation.  GOO has swinging (brachiation) useable even in the completely branch-free environment of glass and steel skyscrapers (so flight, essentially), and is fond of feet-first swinging move-throughs into opponents, without regard for relative physical defenses, nor whether they be foe, innocent, friend or scenery (though he does, for some reason, refrain from attacking statues).  That and soliloquies, long, rambling, completely incoherent, soliloquies, that mean nothing, yet can outrage anyone (trigger any and all Berserk or Enraged disads in anyone listening).  

 

and, of course, any good capitalists know how to delegate, (plus I need to dispose of some bad puns) so, how 'bout some agents...

 

The Agents of Change & Equity

 

Some of these moderately-trained, well-equipped agent-level capitalists have individual names and costumes, like Blue Chip, and are something like officers, while others, like the Wooden Nickels and Thin Dimes are a generic class of agent with as many members as the capitalists can find qualified non-Union applicants.

 

Blue Chip  Charles "Chip" Vanderwarden is an old-money dilettante who always wanted to do a little superheroing, in return for a sizeable investment in the cause, the Capitalist have given him command of the Agents of Equity most elite cadre, the Bonds' Men, and a pretty snazzy blue-caped super-suit that lets him fly (float, really), project taser-like bolts of electricity, and take a punch from Grond  (and eventually wake up with a few bones not broken).

• The Bonds' Men - recruited from elite military, security, or law enforcement who have fallen on hard times, the Bonds' Men literally owe everything (their family home, their spouse's cancer treatment, the settlement of huge punitive judgements against them - whatever solution to the calamity that broke them financially) to the Capitalists, and are among their most grimly loyal enforcers.  They're also the most capable and well-equipped, with cutting edge military gear, or high-tech equipment that was too much for UNTIL's budget.  The slowest of them would make a better commander than Blue Chip.

The Almighty Buck Mild-mannered banker, Archibald Worthington Penniphew, has the odd mutant - or perhaps, inherited magical - power to transform into a glowing stag composed of pure energy.  Why, he has no idea, no one is his family line was exposed to weird radiation, he never had any strange accidents or picked up an innocuous seeming talisman in an eerie second-hand shop or anything.   He is the leader/mascot (he can't talk while transformed, but he's terribly noble & inspiring looking) of the hyper-patriotic Agents of Equity militia, the Yankee Greenbacks.  In stark contrast with his mortal demeanor, the Almighty Buck charges HKAe-Antlers first, into any enemy, and his fearless men follow.

• The Yankee Greenbacks were recruited from lost veterans of the World Wars, Korea, and even the Spanish-American war, forgotten old men on the verge of death with no family or friends left, and offered youth & vigor in return for loyal service.  The Yankee Greenbacks wear uniforms inspired by the US Army, and Series 1918 Federal Reserve Notes, and use semi-automatic blaster carbines designed with a feel in use similar to the M-1, equipped with deadly laser-bayonets, and various specialized grenades.  They do not typically wear armor, but, given time, can recover from virtually any wound as a result of whatever immortality treatment they received. As should be obvious, they are the result of a long-term conspiracy that predates the Capitalists, who presumably acquired them in some sort of takeover deal with some failed nationalist mastermind villain. 

The Exchange A metamorph and power-mimic since she could walk, Miriam Goldsmith, also known as the presumed-dead 90s villain X-Change (who presented as male), has been manipulating, impersonating, and destroying people literally longer than she can remember, her true appearance, like her pre-powered infancy, has been forgotten.  The sultry femme fatale appearance she usually assumes when dealing with allies aware of her powers or otherwise 'off duty' may have been lifted from some little-known film-noir actress of the 40s.  She could have easily joined the Capitalists as a full member, but she chose to be their well-paid spymaster, instead, leading an organization of lesser-powered and unpowered, spies, infiltrators, and grifters who gather, analyze, and funnel information, at her discretion, to the Capitalists.

• The Derivatives are recruited from the ranks of dissolved intelligence agencies, disbarred corporate lawyers, white collar criminals, grifters - and minor-league supers with underwhelming powers - from all over the world, and trained by Exchange in espionage, infiltration, impersonation, identity theft, and the long con.  They are her eyes & ears - and deft fingers - serving, and subtly influencing, the Capitalists.

Three-Dollar Bill A Flamboyantly Gay Texas Gunslinger - imagine John Wayne and Liberace had a love child, OK, a transporter accident - none-the-less on the far right when it comes to business and fiscal issues, Guillermo Navarro, had previously, while closeted, adventured as the grim street-level gunslinging vigilante, Vencedor in San Angelo.  As $3 Bill he wears a comic-opera cowboy costume of intricately tooled white leather & fuchsia 'silk' (actually advanced  ballistic polymer)  and carries 6 ancient Colt revolvers (because, as Vencedor discovered, they are impractically slow to reload in a firefight, so just shoot it dry, drop it, and draw the next one).  He leads a comical-seeming but unpredictably dangerous Agents of Equity cadre known as the Penny Stocks

• The Penny Stocks are recruited from the ranks of failed, disaffected, misfits from the southwest US down to the furthest reaches of South America.  Their pink-and-grey, but, at least, reasonably armored, uniforms were inspired by the defunct 'Pink Sheets' used to trade over the counter stocks before everything went digital.  They are essentially 'baiter agent,' using a bizarre variety of high-tech, high-risk, weapons, no two agents the same, weighted towards entangles, flash attacks, pointless-seeming change-environment, and oddball F/X blasters.  Anything a hero might be vulnerable to could be there.  You never know when a Penny Stock will unexpectedly hit it big.

General Quarters leads the Agents of Change, generally (pi), from an overwatch position using a flight pack that generates blue-white forcefield wings.  His costume is silver with an eagle motif.  He generally (yeah, yeah) prefers a combined-arms approach, using a selection of his agents, below, in proportions suited to the current mission.  

• Thin Dimes, jokingly called the two-bit ninjas, recruited for petite builds & agility, they are trained in conventional escape & evasion and infiltration, and equipped with 'duo-dimension' belts that allow them to virtually eliminate their physical presence along one dimension (height, breadth or depth), thus they can turn sideways to become nearly invisible, walk under doors, or slide between bars or the like (limited desolid).
• Wooden Nickels are recruited from the physically very strong, especially college students, as that is the only positive trait they retain in action, because they are equipped with a 'neural neutralizer' helmet that suppresses all thought, emotion, and mental or psychic activity.   Though zombielike, they are minimally affected by pain and immune to most mental powers, making them useful for specific sorts of missions.  When Wooden Nickels are captured they turn out, once their helmets self-destruct, to not only have no memory of their actions, but no idea they were ever working as super-villain minions, at all, generally believing some cover story about drug safety tests, sleep studies, or hypnotherapy. 
• Lincoln Pennies are recruited, with great difficulty, from black athletes and veterans, they are expected to wear copper-colored uniforms that include tailcoats and stovepipe hats.  Aside from that, they're equipped much like low-rent UNTIL or VIPER agents, with high-tech energy weapons and armor.
• Bad Pennies are violent men, recruited from among ex-cons, ex-cops, washed out military recruits, and broken, failed men of all sorts.  They're given a banned vaccine that has the side effect of either turning you into a puddle of still-living goo, or gives you super-regeneration powers - either way you're 98% immune to e-bola, as well.  They are generally dressed in ordinary clothes and armed with ordinary melee weapons, often chosen for concealability or to appear 'improvised' as if they weren't /really/ looking for a fight.  When the action starts, they don spray-painted-copper plastic full-face masks equipped with radio earbuds to receive orders, but otherwise, they can easily pass for bystanders, counter-protestors, sport fans, or other mostly-male crowds.

 

 

OK, I totally slid into Adam West Batman villain territory, there.

 

 

On the heels of that I hesitantly offer the following idea....

 

 

 

[Opal]

The Legion of CANCELED Heros  (try to picture 'canceled' like it was put there with a big rubber stamp)

 

Of course, they're villains, now, but they tried to be heroes, or at least pass themselves off as heroes, initially.  Whether their powers were too freakish, their motives too purulent, or their name/costume/appearance/special-effect too problematic, they were widely decried and rejected and either revealed as villains, turned to villainy, are hunted as such even as they try to be heroic (if only in their own minds), or just walked away from the whole thing never to be seen again.  So, they're not really a team or even a group that ever gets together, but just a grouping of supers-gone-wrong.  

 

0-6 members - that is, call an end to it and propose something more sane at any time

 

Put the character description - and even the name, if that might be triggering - under a spoiler cut, with appropriate warnings.

 

You can go dark, or squick (you might want nested spoilers), or silly, or all three.

 

example

Spoiler

 Wyld Hare

 

...not her original name...

Spoiler

"So, it's pronounced like sloot-bow-nay or something, right?" 

"Ha! No, it's 100% truth in advertising:  I'm a lagomorphic mutant, a free-lovin' latter-day-hippie sex-positive feminist, and a board-certified psychiatrist!  Oh, and I fight crime!"    

 

 

Dr. Slut Bunny...

 

...was immediately controversial as a superheroine. At first it was just her name, and that her costume was both reminiscent of the notorious 'bunny' waitresses of the 60s and risqué to the point of not even being street-legal in many jurisdictions.  She substituted "Freedom," figuring a patriotic sounding name never hurt.   But, even as she made changes to her name & costume she was sued by a well-known, if past it's prime men's magazine, for trademark infringement - the suit didn't take too long to resolve, her ears and tail were both part of her mutant physiology, she even demonstrated that she could cut them off and they'd just grow back, but she was enjoined from using the word "Bunny" in her name, leaving her 'Dr. Freedom Rabbit,' which didn't really roll off the tongue.   She tried damage control doing a round of talk shows, but that blew up on her when she was confronted on the 'Doctor' part, being brought up short by simple medical questions, she tried to save face by saying 'of course' her PhD was in psychology, not an MD.  So Freedom Rabbit, PhD, then, with a still pretty short skirt but a much more demure top, almost had things under control.

 

Then controversies started up from a different angle.  Street-level supers who primarily target 'normal' criminals often have an image problem, being seen sometimes as bullies or even violent vigilantes.  At first her name & costume overshadowed her actual activities.  Her superhuman hearing and ability to leap prodigious distances often allowed her to catch criminals in the act of even minor violent crimes like muggings and assault.  The press would simply describe criminals she left for police as 'shaken,' 'disheveled,' 'crest-fallen' or 'embarrassed', then go on to dwell on her controversial appearance while dancing euphemistically around her chosen name.

...but it was much worse than that...

Spoiler

Then some MRA blogger pieced together a few rumors and laughed off or recanted statements, and accused her of being a "serial rapist."  Fact checkers quickly ruled the accusations false, noting that nothing she was supposed to have done met even the latest, broadest, legal definition of rape.  But, it started a debate in the manosphere and with various anonymous hackers and snoopers on the case,

someone cracked her secret ID and doxxed her.

 

It turned out she had no advanced degree, at all.  She'd gone to grad school, but her master's thesis had been rejected, but it was the content of that thesis -

Spoiler

that male criminality was the result of grievous sexual frustration, and could be 'cured' with *ahem* active intervention to relieve the underlying cause, regardless of whether the subject consented to 'treatment' 

- that really blew things up for her.  It not only seemed consistent with the ... allegations, but it was taken up by new fans and supporters from the same dark, sticky, corners of the internet.  Seen, now, as endorsing the worst sort of patriarchal victim-blaming, Wyld Hare (the last name she tried out before being CANCELED forever) lost what little legitimate support she had left.  

 

Once the truth was out, a final nail in her would-be hero career came when a death in police custody - an armed robber who had been found unconscious in an alley, and died of complications from a broken pelvis - was attributed to her, putting her on the wanted list.   

 

[Quackhell]

Bravado

 

 

Germán Torres was a hero who operated in Los Angeles in the late 90s and was well known for his cocky wise cracking swagger and for being a charming flirtous ladies man. The press often seemed more interested in who he was involved with romantically than what supervillain he fought. Even back then however there were some rumors of unsavory and possibly sexual aggressive behavior. These came to nothing however as his fame and status allowed him to dodge any ramifications or consequences. This all changed in 2009 when his former sidekick Bravura spoke out about how he had groomed her as a teen and this led to a sexual relationship. This opened the floodgates with many of his former fans, and even women he had rescued from danger telling similar stories of predatory behavior. Rumor has it that when this news broke his Hero Force teammate Headstrong attempted to attack Bravado and only the intervention of Gold Rush and Jetwyld staved off any violence. Hero Force management attempted damage control by transferring him to a European branch of the team, but his reputation followed and he was forcibly removed from the premises by Scarlet Fury...via the 10th floor window. Disgraced and shunned by the hero community, media, his former agents, sponsors and general public he retreated from society. Now he is a shameful black mark in heroic history that earned a rightful spot in the Legion of Cancelled Heroes.

[Sundog]

The American Soldier!

 

You've all heard of the guy who was desperate to serve, who volunteered for a super-soldier program, who became a paragon of the virtues of his nation and of moral and ethical probity?

Yeah, that's not this guy.

Peter Briggs was drafted in '67. He intended to run away to Canada, but he was too stoned to make the trip. He was stoned all through boot camp too. At least until his sergeant found out he was financing his own habits by selling drugs to his fellow recruits. 

So, they gave him an offer, participate in a new super-soldier program or get locked up in a military prison forever. Peter probably should have read the fine print...but he was stoned.

The (cut-price) super drugs mixed with Peter's already severely altered neural biochemistry in weird ways. Sometimes he was a speedster, minutes later he'd be a brick, a little while later everybody in a one-kilometer radius was experiencing whatever sort of high Peter was enjoying at the time. After about a year, they managed to get something of a handle on what powers he'd have at a given time, by giving him more drugs. Peter was having the time of his stoned-out life.

They worked up a stupid looking but very nationalistic costume, and set up a few (staged) battles with NVA "supers". Problem was, they really had made Peter into a quite powerful superbeing, but one that was continuously out of his gourd and darn near uncontrollable. Several of the actors in the filmed propaganda pieces were seriously injured, and the one attempt to use "The American Soldier!" in the field resulted in massive casualties on BOTH sides. Peter apparently had hallucinated an attack by "Cadillac Men", and had used a spontaneously manifesting Napalm Cannon to drive them away. 

By now the Vietnam war was coming to an end, and the super-soldier program was an embarrassment and a liability. It's sole success being even worse. Peter now lives at an isolated base in Nevada, still out of his alleged mind and apparently no older then he was in '67. His minders just keep him doped to the gills and watching continuous daytime TV. He's broken out a few times, causing major property damage each time, but he can usually be tempted back by promises of more drugs. And the American Soldier! has been well and truly cancelled.

[steriaca]

Goldstock

 

William "Bill" Goldstock was a mutant with some odd abilities. He could transform himself into a man made of organic "living gold". Which pleased him because he is a greedy son of a bastard. He made his living getting into superfights, collecting gorged out pieces of his golden flesh to sell for steep prices (away from his body, the pieces stay in whatever mode he was in). He also wasn't above taking bribes from villains, letting them "just" get away. Another part of his wicked plans involved selling promises of protection to businesses and the city's idol rich. One day he did his pitch to the wrong millionaire (one who is also a superhero detective with a love for justice). Soon it was all over the news, evidence of all his crimes. He had to go underground as he fell from being an eccentric superhero with the regenerating golden skin and super strength into the golden bum who doesn't have a penny to his name and knows no shame. This makes him canceled.

 

 

[death tribble]

If it worked once, why not again ? The same people who destroyed the man who became Bald Eagle in Visgoth's Enforcers went after Graydon Fellows the Blue Aegis. They played up the dangers to the public during fights he had and property destruction caused. They did not go as far as the poll they had done with Bald Eagle i.e. that being raped and murdered was preferable to being saved by the hero but in some ways they did something worse. They found out that Aegis was Fellows and gave his identity and personal details to the villains he was chasing. Said villains promptly caught him and threw him into a chemical vat in an industrial park.

Hours later Graydon got out of the vat as the indestructible brick The Purple Beast. Effectively brainless Bravado found him and uses him as the muscle and meat shield of the team. He is careful though as mental effects make Graydon berserk or enraged.

 

But what of the people who leaked the information ? No happy ever after for them. The Corruption passed on details to Visgoth who let Bald Eagle lead an attack on them. The results were pretty final.

[SKJAM!]

Pure Fire aka Mary Eve Wyman is a mutant whose powers revolve around emitting a bright white flame that she can adjust not to burn any specific substance she chooses.  This is usually human flesh, but has other useful settings.  Mary Eve was also a right-wing Evangelical Christian (and in most respects still is) and hung out with a group of other conservative Christian superheroes.  Or antiheroes if you don't like their politics/ideology.  They clash a lot with more liberal/inclusive hero groups.

 

Which was all well and good until one day Pure Fire received what she believed to be a revelation from God after prayer and Biblical study.  Forbidding the ordination of women was wrong, and women should be allowed to teach men in the church and elsewhere!  Used to a free hand in her interviews and appearances, Pure Fire began speaking out about her beliefs.

 

When the male leadership of her group and the male leadership of her denomination told her to recant, and then be silent, Mary Eve refused.  She was labeled as "controversial" and forbidden access to the media outlets she usually appeared on, and finally kicked out of her team (a bad decision on their part, as her unpaid volunteer work had kept them from having to do things like their own laundry or bookkeeping.)

 

But because Pure Fire remains a right-wing Evangelical Christian (and kinda racist in a means well but is tone-deaf way), no other hero groups want to pick her up.  "Cancel Culture" strikes again!