Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

[MisterVimes]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

You don't think governments that allowed a world war to occur for 17 years would be incompetent or that nearly 2 decades of world war wouldn't be a crisis?

 

Actually I don't. Europe had a history of constant conflict and, in centuries gone by, very long conflicts. Try not to judge the period by modern sensibilities, war was glorious and a source of honor. European aristocrats used their influence not to avoid serving in the military, but to get positions of command. War drives economies and the crisis did not occur until after the war. None of the governments in the conflict were incompetent, excepting, possibly, the ill-fated Russians and they had a revolution. Also, the first world war was not a war of ideologies like the second world war.

 

Again, to over simplify, all of the nations involved (except the USA) were already at each others' throats. It took a match to start the fire and the match was likely the assassination of Austrian Duke Franz Ferdinand. Serbs and Croats have been fighting each other for ages and the Serbs were backed by the Russians and the Croats were backed by Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Germans. When the Serbs killed Ferdinand and his wife, the Germans and Austrians wanted to go after the Serbs. Russia sided with the Serbs and everyone started picking sides. This was a battle among monarchies (by and large) and was the same sort of conflict that Europe had had for centuries, it was simply on a larger scale. The key crisis that allowed Hitler to rise to power was that Germany was treated very harshly at the treaty of Versailles. Hitler was just a former soldier and artist that formed a club of nationalists and rode a populist wave to power during a crisis. Remove the crisis and you have just another mad-man.

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Oh that would be a great help to me.

 

I need a Powered-Suit Bad Guy

 

Any type of Soviet/Japanese/Chinese villains

 

A mentalist badguy for sure.

 

Thanks!

 

For Power suit how about the Iron Cross? For a German villian. Also check out the public domain super hero site. I could provided ideas to use.

[Overkill]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Thanks for the idea of the Iron Cross. I like that. The German character created a Mad Scientist With A Heart of Gold who is also a Powered-Suit character.

 

Good rivalry!

[pinecone]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Commies make good fifetys villians, color a villian's costume red, add a hammer/sickle...viola!

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

iiiiiiii know a way to get ideas for silver age villians watch rereuns of the live action baman series latenight on the HUB network

[RexMundi]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Almost done entering these badguys into HD to post here. Aside from the new Day Job training, got to convert to "standard" rules as there are some extra specifics for my own campaign built into the point spread. I'll post the team leader Атомный робот aka Atomnyĭ robot, or The Atomic Robot (think, a Combo of The Doom Patrol's RobotMan, and The Negative Man......) first then the rest should just fly as soon as I have time beyond absorbing this training.

 

Just been preoccupied and entering in the entire team is time consuming, heh, but I liked the way these guys turned out, just gotta tweak a few thing after I get them all entered in....

 

~Rex.... [ATTACH=CONFIG]42085[/ATTACH] The Atomic Robot.

[Overkill]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

thanks a lot! sounds neat!

[Midas]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Thank you. I am sort of setting it in an alternative time period in which the two World Wars did not occur.

 

...

 

I don't really want to do Nazi stuff though.

 

Here is how the alternative timeline sort of happened, I'll try to keep it short.

 

World War I did not occur because there were no defense pacts and the assassination didn't happen. All the players of the 1930s to 1950s survive. Mao, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and the like.

 

Hitler manages to convince other nations to adopt National Socialism and the NSDAP bankrolls revolutions and coups the way the Soviets did. Greece, Norway, Denmark, Vichy France ...

 

Care to expand on how that came about?

 

@Vimes: The first World War has been referred to as "The greatest family squabble in history." Cousin Willy vs Cousin Nicky vs Cousin George.

[Laundry Knight]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

As an armchair philosopher and historian, I am trying to figure out a logical end to a world without the World Wars as there seemed to an inevitable collision course between the various powers involved that had been brewing for a century or three. Of course as a creative writer, if you are saying those things are true by fiat for the sake of the feel of the story, then I understand, but a world without the events of the early twentieth century would be as alien as Mars, Vulcan, or Tatooine. Without the world wars, you would not get the Cold War. Without the Cold War, you would not have the national interstate system, the race to the Moon, or much of our technological advancement, both good and bad. Much of the fifties culture would not even exist without the fear of The Bomb or The Red Scare. We would even have The Bomb without the WWs.

[MisterVimes]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

@Vimes: The first World War has been referred to as "The greatest family squabble in history." Cousin Willy vs Cousin Nicky vs Cousin George.

 

When I was a teacher, I refereed to it as "Family Feud: The Original Series"

[Balabanto]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Actually, no one would have the bomb. There would be no actual threat whatsoever. In my game world, there's total nuclear disarmament. Why? Because after years of atomic threats (And a supervillain realizing this was a good idea and mind controlling some key personnel), people realized "Holy crap! Tons of radiation creates supervillains! We can't nuke people! We'll give the enemy thousands of mean and angry superbeings."

 

If you have no WWII, you have no arms race either. It's likely that most planes would still fly by propellers, and that there would be no Israel. Everyone would still be tacitly racist at best, and openly racist at worst. (This is key, actually.) Superheroes probably wouldn't be tacitly racist, but their DNPCs, etc might be. Americans still have separate black and white bathrooms. There's a lot of stuff you have to pay attention to.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

apulp silver age if you will

[MisterVimes]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

The only solution (other than pure fiat) is that you change the major players in WWII. If you go back to the Aristocracy, by eliminating ideology as the prime motivator, then you eliminate fascism and the stigma with being German/Italian. I think the trick here would be (again) to drag out WWI (a short period this time) and, in Russia, you allow the White Revolution and kill the Red Revolution in its infancy. Communism and Fascism have no stronghold. After the Treaty of Versailles, Germany's economy tanks and instead of Hitler you introduce a bright young Aristocrat (say Albrecht, Duke of Bavaria who was an enemy of the Nazis in our world) to fix the country. WWII kicks off when Albrecht marches into the Rhineland.

 

You eliminate ideology. Germans (while the enemy) remain a noble group of European warriors, and technology rolls on (more or less) as expected. The Japanese would still get nuked (since they are not figured into this variation). The biggest change I could project is that there would be no Israel and the Africa Campaigns would likely have gone differently. There is also a strong possibility that colonialism wouldn't have died off.

[MisterVimes]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Essentially, removing the two world wars (as mentioned above) would create an alien world. The Victorian/Edwardian era could not roll along unimpeded for another 60 years. The collision of wills in Europe was inevitable. In the 19th Century there were 44 (that's Forty-Four) wars/conflicts. Europe at peace was a total unknown. Some war was going to happen (and likely a series of them). Saying "there were no wars" should likely be changed to "there were different wars."

[Cassandra]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Red Menace - Soviet Spy Mastermind

 

You might want to consider watching a Republic Serial for inspiration. The post-war ones had a single villain with a gimmick (invisibility ray, atomic gun, etc.), a main henchmen, and a few goons. The villain would be after some device/item that would give them ultimate power.

 

One of the best is The Black Widow (Carol Forman, from the Superman serial), a mind reader who is an agent for her Eastern Nation dictator father (played by Theodore "Brother Theodore" Gottlieb). He teleports in from time to time to give her orders. She uses disguises and death traps to try and destroy the pair of reporters on her trail.

[Laundry Knight]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Early science fiction and fantasy was the source material for much of early comic books. You might consider going to a used book store and find some old sci-fi and fantasy short story collections. Maybe, you can find some fictional alien world with the kind of social history you want and replace it with Earth oriented place names and personal names.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

an alien device that empowers the user differently each time ala robby reeds h-dial [apedesessor to ben tennysons omnitrix]

[RexMundi]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

So, let's see if these work or not.... Atomic Robot.... 400/75 .....Very nasty Badguy I used in my 50's campaign. Might not be very dangerous to Super Heroes in a lot of ways, but he's not a villain you want running loose......

 

~Rex

[Cassandra]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

International Communist Enforcers (ICE)

 

Red Menace

Red Star

Red Dragon (China)

Hammer

Sickle

 

Team dedicated to bringing about world wide communism.

[RexMundi]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Heh, I remember a Red Dragon from the Elementals comic...... Not a guy I would want to face.

 

~Rex

[Nothere]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Most of them are more golden than silver, but if you just want a quick bit of inspiration about the sort of charecters running around then. You should go to public domain superheroes. As for specific examples of a 50's flavor. Uhm ...I'm gonna have to think a bit.

[assault]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

Lots of aliens, monsters, time travellers and remnants of the past. Mad Science and magic, but the latter tends to destroy its users. At least some "magic" is fake.

 

Hidden Lands and Lost Worlds, although the room for them remaining hidden and/or lost is closing.

 

Wacky transformations. Particularly common in Superman related stories, but present elsewhere too.

 

Space travel is far from unknown, although Earth is still in the early stages of The Space Age. Even Batman went to other worlds.

 

Incidentally, Marvel was more prone to use Cold War themes than DC. Its lowest point was the creepy "Commie Smasher" version of Captain America, who quite frankly raised the question of who actually won WW2. You could quite easily run a Silver Age/50s game without a single Commie, although "foreign spies" are pretty much par for the course.

 

The 50s was a lot closer to the 30s than to present day, and many pulp assumptions are still applicable. Much of the world, and remoter areas of the US, Australia and so on, were pretty much still as they were in the 30s.

 

It would be useful to think of the Comic Book 50s as still being a pulp setting, with extra helpings of pulp Science Fiction.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

I am having a hard time coming up with a group of villains to oppose a superhero group. The setting will be 1954. I wanted that sort of feel and it is also the year when VIPER first forms.

 

I can only really think of one villain that is mentioned in HERO to be around that time, Humbug, that I am sure that I want to use. He is a mental illusionist who also has the ability to inspire blah feelings and depression in his enemies. He'd be the sort of dapper, top hat and cane villain and the most human of them.

 

I can't really think of anything else to go with him.

 

I want to keep it sort of simple and not magic-based.

 

Any ideas? Thanks.

are you familiar with the classic [1960s]batman tv series?[ try making a villian tht would apper there

[steriaca]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

OK. Let's revew some clasic original Batman Live Action TV Show Villians.

 

Egghead: Egg obsessed thieth/mastermind/scientist played by Vincient Price. His gimic...egg puns and 'egg' scientific devices (I myself based my psudo mentelist Doctor Devilegg on this charater).

 

Louie The Lilac: Played by Milten Berle. An old 1930's gainster just now released from a long stay in the pen. His gimic was both using flowers and the hippy movement ("flower children") to comit crimes.

 

Bookworm: Stand in for The Scaircrow (because he was to scary for TV at the time). Gimic: books. Crimes based on them. Weapions based on books. Deathtraps based on books. Speeks in liteary quotes and uses them as clues.

 

King Tut: Stand in for Two Face (again, to scary for TV). Gimic: Bleves to be an egyption pharo. This, egyption theamed crimes and weapions.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Silver Age/1950s Style Villains

 

penny dradfull is i think the CU's bookworm