Australian Supervillains

[DShomshak]

Well, combining Assault's notion of local competition and LL's suggestion about COIL -- and King Cobra started as a VIPER researcher -- maybe VIPER *dud* have a significant presence in Australia, once. Then Timothy Blank became King Cobra, used the COIL Gene on all those agents VIPER had so conveniently placed in nests, ready for "conversion," and befpre VIPER's leaders knew what was happening most of the Australia nests had split off to join the new organization. Since then, COIL has blocked VIPER from moving in again.

 

Dean Shomshak

[steriaca]

28 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Well, combining Assault's notion of local competition and LL's suggestion about COIL -- and King Cobra started as a VIPER researcher -- maybe VIPER *dud* have a significant presence in Australia, once. Then Timothy Blank became King Cobra, used the COIL Gene on all those agents VIPER had so conveniently placed in nests, ready for "conversion," and befpre VIPER's leaders knew what was happening most of the Australia nests had split off to join the new organization. Since then, COIL has blocked VIPER from moving in again.

 

Dean Shomshak

Nice idea Dean. It is not that VIPER isn't intrested in Australia. It is just, well, competition from CoIL, and loss of resources which CoIL made.

 

Humm...they might have there own criminal organization. Let's call them "The Dingoes". Their less VIPER and more Mad Max punks, but do have some tech VIPER left behind and CoIL didn't want and consider unimportant somehow.

[Werehawk]

3 minutes ago, steriaca said:

Nice idea Dean. It is not that VIPER isn't intrested in Australia. It is just, well, competition from CoIL, and loss of resources which CoIL made.

 

Humm...they might have there own criminal organization. Let's call them "The Dingoes". Their less VIPER and more Mad Max punks, but do have some tech VIPER left behind and CoIL didn't want and consider unimportant somehow.

Instead of the Dingoes, may I suggest the Nightriders after the the leader Max wasted if you are going that route. 

[pinecone]

I have always seen OZ as outside the usual Comic universe. And so is able to do their "own thing" so there is a Mystic scene that is as big as can be, but "outsiders" don't get involved. I use the "Dreamtime" as concept of reallity changing mystic power. As for heroes, I just figure they are the same as elsewhere. There are a few comics based in Australia, so Catman is their version of Batman, and is now retired. The Kookaburra is the main Street level hero who works like Jack in the Box from Astro City. I usually assume there is a huge Ninja training ground in the out back.  Coil would be a good "Agent" force to use, as they would naturally want to keep VIPER out. VIPER: Japan could be the source of costumed crime war for heroes to deal with.

 

What are some typical Aussy things that would make good hero themes? I would want to try a char named Digger, with Earth Elemental control, or would that be offensive? I don't know enough.

[steriaca]

9 minutes ago, Werehawk said:

Instead of the Dingoes, may I suggest the Nightriders after the the leader Max wasted if you are going that route. 

A better name. But we do have to use the Dingoes for some group. 

[assault]

I've just bought Steve's new PDF about Costa Azul.

 

At 45 pages, it's nearly a hundred pages shorter than Scott Bennie's Champions of the North.

 

There's probably nearly that much canonical information about Australia between 5th and 6th Edition. Most of it is 5e, and hasn't been updated to 6th. Hmm...

 

Maybe "Champions Down Under" isn't such a dream after all.

[steriaca]

 

3 minutes ago, assault said:

Maybe "Champions Down Under" isn't such a dream after all.

That could be a good supplement. I still want "Champions of the Rising Sun" and "Champions Down South" myself. 

 

Champions of the Rising Sun = Champions of Japan. 

 

Champions Down South  = Champions of Mexico and/or Central America/Meso America. 

[Opal]

3 minutes ago, steriaca said:

A better name. But we do have to use the Dingoes for some group. 

 

Maybe they could be a kidnapping ring?

[steriaca]

Just now, Opal said:

 

Maybe they could be a kidnapping ring?

*slaps forehead* Of course. 

[Lord Liaden]

Some may disagree, but "Dingoes" sounds like dipping back into Australian cliches. Especially when promoted by non-Australians.

 

I've said it before: One attempt to exploit the Well of Worlds at Uluru by DEMON or a sorcerer supervillain goes wrong, releasing a wave of magic across Australia, and BAM! Origins aplenty. In-setting there's no need for the majority of those origins and powers to be magical, any more than after the Walpurgisnacht Working.

 

Completely fits with the CU and so easy to justify, it's remarkable it hasn't happened sooner.

[Opal]

Just now, Lord Liaden said:

Some may disagree, but "Dingoes" sounds like dipping back into Australian cliches. Especially when promoted by non-Australians.

That (not for the first time) makes me wonder "who thinks of these goofy supers' names, anyway?"  I mean, obviously, comic book writers and Champions! nerds, but /in the imagined world/, who gets fire powers and decides to fight crime as "The Flamer" or gets modest teleport powers and organizes a kidnapping ring called "The Dingoes?"   And if someone does take offense?  Well you probably can cancel a superhero, just shame them into never fighting crime again, but villains likely keep on villaining...

 

...I suppose it does get back to campaign tone, too.  

[Lord Liaden]

Probably the same folks who thought of the Beatles and the Foo Fighters, the Rock and the Undertaker.

[Opal]

Just now, Lord Liaden said:

Probably the same folks who thought of the Beatles and the Foo Fighters, the Rock and the Undertaker.

Promoters?

 

Maybe we'll see some in a future supplement.  Like Jimmy Dougan, they could be DNPCs, or just PITANPCs.

 

[Lorehunter]

2 hours ago, Opal said:

That (not for the first time) makes me wonder "who thinks of these goofy supers' names, anyway?"  I mean, obviously, comic book writers and Champions! nerds, but /in the imagined world/, who gets fire powers and decides to fight crime as "The Flamer" or gets modest teleport powers and organizes a kidnapping ring called "The Dingoes?"   And if someone does take offense?  Well you probably can cancel a superhero, just shame them into never fighting crime again, but villains likely keep on villaining...

 

...I suppose it does get back to campaign tone, too.  

Also if your team is not Australian the cliches instantly set the stage in the mind's eye of the players. If your players are a little more worldly or better at disassociating themselves from their personal reality the use of cliches is less useful. I have had players that had to be spoon fed and others who could have been on "Who's Line Is It..." Cliches and stereotypes like salt, bad as they can be, do have a place and purpose. 

[Lord Liaden]

32 minutes ago, Opal said:

Promoters?

 

Maybe we'll see some in a future supplement.  Like Jimmy Dougan, they could be DNPCs, or just PITANPCs.

 

 

Well, sure, promotion is part and parcel of the mechanism, but what I meant is that it's human nature to try to find a title or a label for themselves or what they do that makes them stand out, that encapsulates what they believe is special about themselves.

 

BTW the 5E Champions supplement, Everyman, containing a whole bunch of diverse and useful NPCs, also features a public relations firm called "CC Promotions" which provides image consulting and publicity, licensing and money management, and costume design and construction, to superheroes.

[Duke Bushido]

I have actively avoided commenting in this thread, for several of the reasons some folks have touched on:

 

Go through a list of comic book supers--

 

Spiderman

Hulk

Electro

Plastic Man

Ghost Rider

Captain Marvel

Iron Man

The Flash--

 

These are all (as far as I know) Americans.

 

Yet they aren't called "Some distinctly American spider"

Hulking North American

Plastic Bags Strewn through Cacti Man

Spirit of '76 Rider

Captain Marvelous Bald Eagle

Iron Horse

Racing Stars and Stripes

 

 

I admit (yet again) that I'm no expert, but from a few googles, Flag Suits  and country-specific themes are actually kind of _rare_ (and openly mocked, even if good-naturedly).

 

While the idea of someone introducing himself as "Wom-Batman" tickles me to no end, That very same list-- Spiderman, Hulk, Electro, Plastic Man, Ghost Rider, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, the Flash-- even their power sets-- would be just as at home and proper on an all-Australian cast as it does on an all-american cast.

 

Sure-- I had that momentary flash of a telepath / illusionist hybrid "I will show you your worst nightmare!" based entirely off a photograph of a wet koala I once saw, but immediately I saw all the problems trying to give him an "Australian" name or theme.  Such things just don't really seem to happen, and certainly aren't important to the validity of character "belonging" in a particular setting.

 

I'm not saying you're wrong for trying; it might be just me.  I just really felt the need to mention it.   And remember: it _could_ just be me; I don't do "theme teams" either, for very much the same reasons.

 

 

[drunkonduty]

21 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I was led to believe that decades ago from the film Walkabout.

 

Does this term not refer to that type of journey? Has it always been used pejoratively, or is that recent, or was it in the past?

 

A quick google says the term goes back to 1828 and was used pejoratively by white settlers to refer to the supposed habit of Indigenous Australians to disappear when they should be at work. I'd have to go into a pretty long and involved history lesson to explain why that on-the-surface simple explanation has a lot of ugly assumptions included in it. Let it simply be said Indigenous Australians do not appreciate the word.

 

As for the movie, keep in mind it's a movie by white people for white people. It doesn't make much effort to understand Indigenous life or traditions. I mean, it's not deliberately trying to be offensive. It just operates under certain assumptions that were common in the day. I'd have to re-watch it to say anything more concrete about it. 

 

But thanks to everyone for making the effort to understand. :-) 

[Ninja-Bear]

9 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Some may disagree, but "Dingoes" sounds like dipping back into Australian cliches. Especially when promoted by non-Australians.

 

I've said it before: One attempt to exploit the Well of Worlds at Uluru by DEMON or a sorcerer supervillain goes wrong, releasing a wave of magic across Australia, and BAM! Origins aplenty. In-setting there's no need for the majority of those origins and powers to be magical, any more than after the Walpurgisnacht Working.

 

Completely fits with the CU and so easy to justify, it's remarkable it hasn't happened sooner.

Bam! Aren’t you just being as cliched? Australia has the Dreamtime hence magic so therefore referencing magic is being cliched? Personally I don’t have a problem with this however you want to make the fuss about cliches, I’ll hold you to that standard. 
 

 

Duke Bushido as to flag suits, there’s more than probably what your Google fu found. Go look at Public Domain of Super Heroes.  Now whether that was an issue as to why they aren’t popular? I don’t know. Also once Capt. America became popular and Comic book companies have been know to sue each other, I figure that could be another reason why you don’t see as many flag suits these days. 

[assault]

Incidentally, North American cliche names are all over the place, even if we ignore the many, many flagsuits.

 

Just a couple from the X-Men: Thunderbird (oh my!), and, uh, what's that guy with claws called? Even Nightcrawler is a North American name for a kind of Big Old Worm which isn't used in, say, for the sake of argument, Germany.

[Greywind]

12 hours ago, Opal said:

 

Maybe they could be a kidnapping ring?

 

Do they eat the babies?

[Tjack]

On 3/31/2021 at 8:56 PM, assault said:

 

Actually Captain Boomerang can be pretty cool. He was given an actual personality way back when in Suicide Squad.

 

As for US villains - since the US is the default for superheroic media, there are a lot of US cliches baked in. And that's when us dirty furriners aren't sending you up.

 

But yeah, as I mentioned above, reskinning US characters as Australian is mostly pretty easy. And boring.

      Let’s hear it for Captain Boomer-Butt!

[Lord Liaden]

6 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Bam! Aren’t you just being as cliched? Australia has the Dreamtime hence magic so therefore referencing magic is being cliched? Personally I don’t have a problem with this however you want to make the fuss about cliches, I’ll hold you to that standard. 

 

Um, that's from the official Champions Universe. Uluru is the location of the Well of Worlds, a portal to many other dimensions. It has a magical guardian, the Wanambi Man. That's already baked into the setting, hence appropriate to use to justify an evolution of the setting. If one was doing a completely original super Australia, then of course your criticism would be justified.

[Jhamin]

8 hours ago, assault said:

Incidentally, North American cliche names are all over the place, even if we ignore the many, many flagsuits.

 

Just a couple from the X-Men: Thunderbird (oh my!), and, uh, what's that guy with claws called? Even Nightcrawler is a North American name for a kind of Big Old Worm which isn't used in, say, for the sake of argument, Germany.

 

Yeah, actual comics are pretty racist when they deal with most any Native American or foreign character.  The International X-Men have a lot of history at this point but if you were creating the "new" X-Men today Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, ect would catch a lot of flack for being raging stereotypes.  I'm really hoping that anything Hero does manages not to be similarly culturally insensitive.

I am *strongly* on the side of the folks saying lets not make a potential Australia book about Dingos, Boomerangs, didgeridoos, Dreamtime, and so on.  The fact that drunkonduty has to warn us away from using some pretty nasty ethic slurs as character names says to me that this sort of thing has a high potential to be really embarrassing if done wrong.

[Opal]

5 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

Do they eat the babies?

It was a global meme 20 years before anyone had said 'meme' in public, and 13 years before the September that never ended.   The only thing that might make more sense than having a perverse kidnapping ring called The Dingoes (either calling themselves that or so dubbed by the press) would be putting them in the 80s, when the event was in full swing (and was, really, very sexist, if I may interject a alternate rage-angle), rather than the present, now that the poor woman's been vindicated.  

 

12 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Spiderman

Hulk

Electro

Plastic Man

Ghost Rider

Captain Marvel

Iron Man

The Flash--

 

These are all (as far as I know) Americans.

 

Yet they aren't called Some distinctly American

 

The Hulk is a re-skinning of Jekyl & Hyde, I'll grant you, and I can't keep the Cpt Marvel variation straights, I think that  could be the DC version which, is distinctly western, based on classical mythology, rather than distinctly American.  

 

However, most of the others are distinctly American archetypes (that was the other word I was looking for besides cliche & stereotype!).  The scary-cool Biker on the Open Road.  The genius inventor/self-made millionaire.  The movie star.   The baby-boom generation-gap Teenager.  And, of course, the fully-integrated immigrant fighting for Truth, Justice and the American Way.  

 

Sure, some were pop-culture icons that came & went and may no longer be as resonant as they were at the character's first appearance.

 

8 hours ago, assault said:

Incidentally, North American cliche names are all over the place, even if we ignore the many, many flagsuits.

 

Cliches are the low-hanging fruit of superhero ideas.  Do them well they're Archetypes and might be called 'iconic,' mediocre, they're stereotypes, done badly, offensive ones.  But superhero comics had been picking American cliches for over 40 years before Champions! even came around, and it's been another 40, the branches are bare and not just the low-hanging ones... and, then, the genre has gone on to spawn many of its own cliches.  

 

9 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Also once Capt. America became popular and Comic book companies have been know to sue each other, I figure that could be another reason why you don’t see as many flag suits these days. 

 

And the whole attitude Americans have towards patriotism has changed a lot since the Golden Age.   Today we're much more concerned about the threat posed by White  Nationalists, than we are comforted by patriotic flag-waving, for the most recent instance, but it goes back decades.   A flagsuit doesn't mean what it did in 1941.

[Greywind]

4 hours ago, Opal said:

It was a global meme 20 years before anyone had said 'meme' in public, and 13 years before the September that never ended.   The only thing that might make more sense than having a perverse kidnapping ring called The Dingoes (either calling themselves that or so dubbed by the press) would be putting them in the 80s, when the event was in full swing (and was, really, very sexist, if I may interject a alternate rage-angle), rather than the present, now that the poor woman's been vindicated.  -

 

And it was the band Oz played in on Buffy.