SKJAM!

E'toile de la Seine: A youngish woman dressed in swashbuckler style and a domino mask, she uses her sword and various star-themed gadgets to protect the neighborhoods around the Seine river. And now that she's joined the team, the rest of France as well. Secretly she is trying to make up for her aunt, the notorious thief Lis Noir.

Robin is several different companions.

For the Dimension Bomb scenario, I'd put the majority of heroes as "missing", so that you can reintroduce them as they straggle back from whatever dimension they got deposited in. Dead would be just a handful of people the GM doesn't like or has no use for, and healing comas for heroes who would resolve the situation too easily.

I like the immigration one, though it does need a little something to explain why it was chosen over the others. Let's see, emergency situation... The idea for fast-tracking immigrants with superpowers has been kicking around for a while, but the bill to allow it has been languishing in Congress for years, shuttled from committee to committee due to every special interest group having their own axe to grind about it. But last Tuesday, Doctor Devious exploded a dimension bomb at the Kirby Awards, where America's best and brightest superheroes were gathered to honor their own. Now, most of the U.S.'s top heroes are dead, missing, or in healing comas. There's still plenty of street-level and second-stringer heroes, and they're managing to keep the villains down to a dull roar, but this situation is a huge blow to national security. So Congress finally got off their collective ass and passed the "Service Earns Citizenship" bill, and supers who were in the process of earning citizenship or waiting for their green card are suddenly at the front of the line, provided they'll serve their new country in its time of need.

Sekhmet Leona Kingsley traveled in the same social circles as Darrian Wentworth, and often found herself at least partially agreeing with his speeches about the despoiling of Egypt. She was surprised, however, when he revealed that he was going to take real action on the subject, and asked her to help. Of course, what he meant was logistical support, but she insisted on coming along on an actual raid. What she had never told anyone was that she had a fascination with cutting into things and watching them bleed. Things that included humans--thank Ra for wealthy parents who covered it up. In her Sekhmet guise, Leona wears a stylized lioness mask, and claws that fit over her hands. She's scary good with her claws (or failing that, her sharp fingernails), but is otherwise not good at combat. Sekhmet is also a little too fascinated with blood and will often toy with her prey.

It should be noted that Hotaru is a perfectly good girl's name in Japan.

For Dark Champions, "Shoot Your Gun" by the 22-20s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUFfabs5xM4 And for Dark Champions/Horror Hero, "Blood Like Lemonade" by Morcheeba http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyRxTTegjXM

Fiendishly Evil Rotten Animal Lovers.

Yeah, the first few episodes are like a much less cynical KA with much, much less profanity. Not sure where the show is going now that possibly real superpeople exist.

A new anime series that might be of interest is "Samurai Flamenco" (despite the name, no samurai are involved.) A male model who's secretly a huge superhero geek decides that since costumed crimefighters don't actually exist, he will become one so that they do. His first adventure winds up with a cop burning his costume. He gets better at it once he gains a fighting coach. Later he's joined by Flamenco Girl, a pop star who had the same idea, but did more advance prep (and thus was forced to debut after him.) Despite her frilly "magical girl" costume, Flamenco Girl is pretty formidable. She knows martial arts, and her "magical girl wand" has tear gas, a taser and retractable spikes. Also, she likes to make sure criminals won't be able to reproduce any time soon. She's kind of disturbing, actually. The cop is desperately trying to rein the heroes in while secretly wishing he too could bust heads without legal procedure. Episode seven either reveals that actual superbeings do exist, or is trolling the audience hard--we won't know until the next episode.

Book giveaway at my blog! Some good ones this time. http://www.skjam.com

For the one setting I used where "witches" were always evil, the main character, a witch hunter, eventually pieced together that it was the use of magic that turned one evil. And that at some point in the past, it hadn't done that. What was going on is that witches drew on a power source outside themselves, and a certain being whose behavior was strikingly similar to the popular idea of the Devil had managed to gain control of the "pipeline." Thus his corrupting influence was pumped into each witch whenever they used magic for anything, and he could control how much power they could draw. Only by pledging service to the being by whatever name you felt comfortable with could you gain access to the higher power spells.

Generally, they're scaled to the villain. Someone like Bulldozer is lucky to score some Competent Normal thugs armed with cheap guns or maybe just knives and clubs. Your low-level mastermind type will have Skilled Normals with decent weapons and maybe some armor, often a level in Teamwork. After that we start getting into agent-level thugs and maybe serious martial artists. The higher level masterminds can offer powered armor and serious weapons, but usually insists on a better level of minion. By the time you get to Dr. Destroyer, his ordinary mooks are built on more points than starting player characters.

The Cursebreaker is otherwise known as Marjane Rezai, an Iranian woman with the mutant ability to disrupt so-called "magic." She specializes in lifting alleged "curses" which she believes to be simply the result of a common mutation referred to by its users as magic. She has been criticized more than once for breaking "curses" without finding out what they are first--many were actually beneficial or kept nasty critters contained. (Some cursegivers have now added an "avoid Marjane Rezai" component to their transformation spells.) New team: The Sixshooters: A six-member team, each of whom uses guns or other firearms for truth, justice and the Second Amendment way. They're sponsored by the National Rifle Association, and are meant as a public relations response to the Hired Guns.

The Stone Lions, a children's fantasy edutainment book set in Moorish Spain, and teaching band symmetry. http://www.skjam.com/2013/10/23/book-review-the-stone-lions/

Mind Gladiator, aka Kurt Wu, is a powerful telepath/telekinetic who really wanted to be a martial artist, but his physical body just couldn't keep up. So he has learned to apply martial arts concepts to his mental powers and fights that way. His code of honor requires him not to use his brain-affecting powers on anyone who does not possess such powers themselves, so many people only know about his skill with telekinesis. However, his honor code only applies in combat, he's happy to use his powers to eavesdrop on people's thoughts and control their actions to get his teammates out of jail.

"Rot, Riot, and Rebellion" by Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos, a history of the University of Virginia's early years. If anyone tells you that today's college students are lazy, entitled, disrespectful and violent, refer them to this book. A full review at http://www.skjam.com/2013/10/14/book-review-rot-riot-and-rebellion-mr-jeffersons-struggle-to-save-the-university-that-changed-america/

Snow Lily was born Yuri Shiroyuki. She is a modern kunoichi who uses her disguise, seduction and chemistry skills for corporate espionage. A certain zaibatsu hired her during the beginning of the Iraq war to retrieve secret documents indicating their complicity in atrocities committed by the Saddam Hussein regime. The infiltration and theft parts of the mission went off swimmingly, but Yuri ran into a snag when the too-rapidly advancing US forces cut off her escape route. She was forced to make a detour through a bombed-out cemetery, and was caught there by a pack of ghuls who had been freed from imprisonment. To save herself from mission failure, she agreed to undergo a blasphemous rite that turned her into a ghul as well. She promised to return to her new clan once her current mission was completed, but a Coalition anti-undead squad wiped them out in the meantime. The ghul transformation gives Snow Lily several advantages. She is immune to both hemotoxins and neurotoxins, can survive on very limited oxygen, and her blood does not flow quickly from her body, limiting bleeding damage. She also feels little pain, so is effectively much stronger than she looks. On the other hand, her skin has a greyish pallor, she is cool to the touch, and her breath is terrible. (It's surprising how many men will overlook these small details.) Also, she can no longer eat cooked food; only dead and rotting meat and vegetation will nourish her, and she has a special taste for human corpses. Snow lily will often kill a random homeless person and stash them somewhere to have a snack for later. ETA: New team! Money Matters is a four-person mercenary team that specializes in money-related crimes. They're highly-skilled and command large fees. And of course, each of them has powers or themes related to some sort of money. They sometimes kill in the course of their assignments, but are not assassins.

Frozen Star: Named in English, you might think he's a cold-based character, but that's actually the Russian slang for what American scientists call a "black hole." Density/gravity powers, perhaps the ability to suck objects into another universe. Calling him "black hole" is his Enraged condition by the way, that's an obscene insult in Russian.

The Brave and Bold author was also well known for not really reading the characters' own stories before writing the crossovers. Thus, for example, Green Arrow, everywhere else at that point an angry lefty with an overactive social conscience, became in Brave & Bold a get-rich-quick sucker who was desperate to return to his playboy days. And in the Copperhead story mentioned above, Barbara Gordon, at that point in time a grown woman who had a PhD and was head librarian at the Gotham City Library, worries about explaining spending so much of her allowance to her father.

Mugged by Excuse Me, Mr. President! possibly.

Reminds me of the Spidey Super Stories villain who dressed as Napoleon so she could hide the boxing glove she used to punch random people using the classic pose. And that's seven, go for it Cygnia!

"Attack on Titan" is a recent anime series about people fighting anthropophagous giants that are nearly indestructible with Rennaisance technology. I hope you already know what "Teen Titans" is.

Ann Doe is Lady Ennui. Her life before she joined the Court is unknown as she's never been motivated enough to talk about it. Her Falsestone allows her to spread a complete lack of motivation and boredom with everything. The other members of the team have to nag her into using the power, and she is usually carried around the battlefield by a summoned monster as she doesn't like exerting herself. (It may come as a surprise to heroes to learn she is fully capable of walking and even running on her own.) Four is Death, so time for a new team! The Unholy Days are a loose group of villains who are themed around various holidays and yearly events (Arbor Day, Grandparents' Day, Professionals Day, etc.) They're pretty low-powered, so they have to gang up to be effective against even the weakest hero teams. Membership is fluid, but right now they have seven members.

Attack on Teen Titans.