Quackhell

Totategumo
 
 Yoshio Inaba is a defensive and tactical fighter a former JSDF special forces sniper until he was wounded by  super powered terrorist causing his rifle to explode with a thought he lost his right eye most of the vision in his left his right  arm from the elbow and serious facial scaring. he would spend the next 2 years undergoing multiple surgeries and recovering as part of the process his Physical therapist convinced him to take up archery to help him develop his off hand dexterity coordination and strength. his previous experience as a sniper allowed him to develop his skill rapidly until he found himself representing japan in the special Olympics and winning the Gold.
 
His story was taken up by  the media which resulted in a large Industrial company approachinghim to be a test patient for an advanced cybernetics system they where developing.
 
he was an excellent candidate for the program and his Right eye was replaced with an advanced Cybernetic offering multiple vision modes and telescopic vision (the damage to his left having mostly been healed/repaired) his right arm was replaced with a prosthetic limb that not only had full dexterity but beyond human strength.
 
his recovery was shown off at a company press conference when his life would change again three super villains attacked to kidnap the projects Lead scientist he had his bow and a quiver full of arrows though in the end he only required three well aimed shots to put down all three despite their powers.  The company saw an opportunity to create their own superhero and Yoshio saw an opportunity to serve his country once more.
 
Now as Totategumo The Trapdoor spider he is the tactical specialist of the team mostly know for his bow and selection of specialized arrows his real secret is his gift for preparing the battle field using a combination of grenades mines and his smart camouflage coat that allows him to control the battlefield striking from ambush and guiding enemies away from civilians and towards his more straight forward team mates.

Lady Marmalade 
 
Esteban Diaz is a mutant with healing abilities. They named their superhero and drag queen persona after the burnt orange glow that accompanies use of their powers. Singing and dancing acts as a focus for Esteban's power to have greater effect. Lady Marmalade in battle performing in full drag and glowing brightly while healing their teammates and citizens in need is quite a sight to see. 
 
New team: Southern Cross
 
Who makes up the team of the four top heroes of New Zealand?

Warrior 
 
Carl Thomas grew up in the streets of Auckland, where he saw the worst of the interactions between Maori and pakeha culture. Drunkenness, drugs and violence were a part of his life, and he grew up with a continuing lack of respect for his own Maori people. He was fortunate enough to have a pair of sensible and sober parents, but so many around him did not.
But when he was 16, after a minor scuffle with a gang of local toughs, his parents sent Carl to live with his Aunt and Uncle in a small town on North Island. And there he saw a very different scene. Maori and pakeha lived together, in a shared culture. There were differences, but not terrible ones, and they could be worked out. There were problems, but those problems didn't look as insurmountable as they had back in the city.
And something else happened. A car accident occurred, and a woman was trapped in the vehicle. Carl literally ripped the car apart with his bare hands to get her out.
Since then, Carl has devoted himself to being a modern man, a modern hero, and a modern Maori. He wears comfortable, stylish clothes, but has had a full set of facial tattoos applied (which was difficult, with his steel-hard skin). He champions the traditions of his people, and also the requirements of the the modern era, and tries to stand as a symbol of what can be - a synthesis of all that is good in tradition and today.

Coyōtl
 
 
An inventor and gadgeteer who used the guise of the Native American trickster spirit as the theme of his gimmicks and overly complicated death traps. He was on the losing end of a long rivalry with the Mid West Crusaders resident speedster Rundown for years. He got the last laugh by ditching his oft times faulty tech and used a combination of an oil slick and high tension wire to decapitate the hero. He was shocked by the response of the various groups that began to decimate his associates. He managed to escape the initial wrath and was planning on escaping overseas when the vigilante Grim Gallows caught up with him. The authorities found his body hanging from a noose over a fan made memorial to Lady Sunshine and the Crusaders.
 
 

Yacumama
 
Nataya is a member of an indigenous Asháninka tribe in Peru. Her people's land has been exploited and ruined by logging and it's resources stolen for years. When she was 15 her mutant shape shifting abilities activated in a moment of anger and her mind chose the form of a legendary giant serpant Yacumama the "mother of water". She went on to attack loggers, rubber harvesters, cartel plantations and anyone else who she saw as perpetrators against her people's land. This led to her going against US interests and causing a conglomerate to call on the US government to okay an unsanctioned incursion using military contractors. Nataya fought hard against the group of super powered mercenaries the Kill Corps, but was nearly defeated until La Araña intervened. She was then recruited to the team. She is still very young, naive and full of anger and the other members of the team manipulate her somewhat to act as a weapon against their common enemies.

La Araña
 
La Araña (the spider) hails from El Salvador. She was raised as Esmeralda Anna Mariana Perez, an orphan following the brutalities of the civil war there, managing to attain a good education despite her bereft status by winning a variety of scholarships and prizes, and wound up with doctorates in physics and chemistry, but was careful not to let people know how easy that was for her - her mutant capability is intellect. She could have gotten ten doctorates in the time she took to get two.
 
She settled into a comfortable position with the current government, and was soon running her own research establishment. She kept climbing the ranks...until one day she found that her newly acquired clearances had revealed something about herself.
 
Her parents had not been killed in a guerrilla ambush, as she had been told. Her father had not been a country doctor. He and her mother had been peace activists, seeking to find a peaceful solution to the country's woes. So the government of the time, in colludance with the CIA, had them murdered. She even found her real name.
 
Over the next six months, the men who killed her family died horrible, lingering deaths from untraceable and exotic toxins. Then she did the same to the CIA agents involved - but a couple of top flight FBI investigators managed to trace the chemicals back to her, and she was forced to flee.
 
La Araña (She now uses no other name) took most of the budget for her research establishment with her when she left. A stay in Cuba got her access to old Soviet supertech, which she repurposed into her iconic battlesuit - four arms (the lower two run by AI servitors), capacities to spray a wide variety of entangles and swing lines, and several varieties of sprayable, injectable and contact poisons. Then she went looking for people who hated the USA as much as she did.

I'm going to put up a group that is in my universe and see how you all play with the concept.
 
 
The Nuclear Wing.
 
This 31st century mercenary unit has has something that puts the fear of God in every sentient lifeform in the known universe; its own private nuclear arsenal. The threat of using one of these devices is usually enough for the target to concede but for exceptionally stiff resistance, there is a 6 man unit to really get the point across. Each member has abilities that mimic certain aspects of nuclear warfare from straight-up WMD to its after effects and everything in between. 
 
 
Once the six spots are filled I will reveal my members of the Nuclear Wing and compare the two. 

Special thanks to Quackhell for posting the color interpretations of the original pride flag, and for throwing down Pink.  It looks like we should be able to do all 8!   I'm going to take the always idiosyncratic indigo (which we can all thank Isaac Newton's mystic bent for).    Why, not, I played The Indigo Incantantrix back in the day.
 
Selene
 
Named after the titan of ancient Greek mythology, so the final 'e' is pronounced, Selene is a very tall (6'6"), willowy, sublimely beautiful transwoman.  She wears a deep purplish-blue costume seemingly studded with silvery sequins giving the 'illusion' of stars in a night sky.  Her hair is long, straight, and so dark a black as to appear blue in the right light, while her face is luminously pale.  In total darkness she actually glows enough to dimly light a modest area around her, in full  sunlight, she is surrounded by shadow, not deep shadow, just cool, comfortable shade.  Aside from that, she has few obvious superpowers.  In combat, she evades attacks with smooth, sinuous movements that seem languid yet make her almost untouchable, like an Aki-do master, similarly, enemies sometimes find themselves over-committing and losing their balance when attacking her, even if she doesn't actually touch them.   She can deflect energy and ranged killing attacks in a small area around her, or neutralize such attacks in a larger area if her power is enhanced...
 

Afrodisia
 
A social media LGBTQ+ advocate and influencer,  the loud and proud pansexual princess stands out with her large cotton candy pink afro and flashy and fabulously outrageous fashions. This unfortunately made her a perfect target for Pastor Purejoy and his followers. She was abducted and subjected to Purejoy's sadistic conversion therapy. However this treatment backfired and seemed to unlock the hidden mutant potential in Afrodisia. Instead of repressing her sexual drive and desires it intensified them and gave her the ability to project those feelings into others. Freed from Purejoy's clutches by Captain Apollo she was happy to join the Rainbow Warriors. Her abilities allow her to calm enemies and fill them with joy and sexual urges that tend to make them no longer a threat. She is excellent in riot control situations...although sometimes the results can be a bit shocking for the more prudish.

Sin-eater
 
When Dylan Scurlock's wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer he tried to stay brave for her. As her physical and mental health deteriorated she expressed deep fear of her soul being tainted by her sins. She was inconsolable and Dylan in desperation vowed to her that he would utilize the ritual of eating her sins to save her soul. When she passed, he felt obligated to follow through with his promise. However the ritual changed him. He could feel the sin eating away at him. He knew he was damned by his actions. He also hungered for more as it seemed to grant him strength and a dark animal cunning. He began killing victims and consuming their sins, not to save them, but to temporarily sate his appetite. He uses the group to help provide him with victims, but he also views them as bodies ripe with sin that he will someday harvest.

Guess they got canceled.  (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
 
 
Veil is able to cloak anyone and anything.  He thought it would be fun to drive his car really fast while cloaking it from sight so the cops couldn't see him.  The thing is, neither could the other drivers, and one of them slammed into Veil's car, causing it to spin out and flip.  Thanks to airbags, Veil survived, but his girlfriend didn't.  While cloaking things from sight isn't inherently lethal, he's been known to hide innocents from sight during the Mourners' battles so they get caught in the crossfire more often.
 

Kinetic Dad
 
Using a black & neon-green battlesuit covered in reconfigurable advanced carbon composite leaf springs, Kinetic Dad is able to move, impact, and recoil as a near-perfectly-elastic object.  As such he is virtually immune to normal physical damage.  Though he gets knocked around like a pinball in the process, he can often control his careening enough to redirect the kinetic energy of attacks into his foes. 
But Kinetic Dad is less in The Legion of Progress for advanced carbon composite leaf springs, and more to promote social change, specifically the acceptance of single parents and the importance of fatherhood (earning him some unwelcome MRA fans). His superhero banter tends to extra-lame "Dad jokes," and fatherly advice.
 
 

C2-Shining-C
 
A gold-tone art deco robotoid reminiscent of Metropolis (and thus C3PO, who was notoriously inspired by the robot therefrom), who speaks with a rich, cultured, but metallic voice, like Sidney Poitier reciting Shakespeare with a bucket on his head, C2-Shining-C was created by a very elderly 'mad' ("but I have tenure!") scientist, with programming to match his retro-aesthetic, as a legacy that would carry on the highest ideals of Manifest Destiny,  Patriotism and Progress, and donated by said scientist to the Legion of Progress.   
C2SC is literally colorblind - his photoreceptors register only the presence or absence of light in the visible spectrum, he uses radar for targeting and hearing (voice recognition) & touch (fingerprints) to identify individuals - and is programmed to acknowledge only current citizenship as a valid way to classify different groups of human beings.   Similarly, his moral and ethical programming is strictly black & white, persons are either law-breaking or law-abiding, either moral or immoral, patriotic or un-American.   Or, at least, the way he expresses it is.  When confusing shades of grey come up, he seems to ignore them, yet still make a fair judgement, sometimes just by choosing the order in which he processes the pros and cons of their behavior, similarly, when Patriotism comes up, he falls back on his own version of the "No True American" fallacy, thus he has judged noble-intentioned refugees 'True Americans' and vindictive flag-suited hyper-nationalists 'un-American.'  Likewise, his idea of "Progress" seems very old-fashioned - industrialization and growth is progress - yet he always seems to rationalize, with a little old-fashioned conservationist rhetoric, respect for the environment.   Whether he's overcome his programming, or it was always that nuanced is an open question.  
C2SCs powers include robotic super-strength, self-repair regeneration (from the tiniest scrap, apparently), rocket-assisted flight, and EM energy projection, including both blasts and force-fields, as well as electromagnetic TK.   His systems are entirely analog, rendering him unable to interface with modern computers & technology - and quite immune to hacking attempts - but giving him a mind so human-like it can be contacted telepathically - in fact, some who have done so are convinced he is a cyborg, a human brain in a robot body, and his old-timey-robot manner is either an act or a matter of how his sub-systems were designed.  
 
 
 

Beatdown
 
Charli Madison had been a fighter all her life. Trained by her ex-boxer father Chuck "Mad Dog" Madison at the age of 10 she excelled at the sweet science. She dominated as an amateur and was well on her way in the pros when a serious eye injury forced her into early retirement from the ring. During her fighting days she had been exposed to Detroit's criminal world and would eventually become an enforcer and debt collector for The Commission. The Commission was a new organization set to try and take over in Detroit and replace the gangs and the last vestiges of the Mob. To this end they wanted to boost Charli to the next level. She acquired super strength and reflexes through drug enhancements provided by the criminal chemist The Fix. The Commission also had some armor boots and gauntlets made to provide protection and more offensive capability. Lastly her hi-tech shades protect her injured eye and compensate for her blindspot. Her work with the Commission as Beatdown has brought her into conflict with hero team the Motor City 6 and the reformed alien invader turned bouncer named Brawl.

Thought I would throw an image out there to try and rekindle this thread. Maybe we loosen things up a bit and just forgo the picking winners deal and just let people post ideas and their own images if they wish. 

Crunch Time, built a suit that lets her manipulate her personal time field. Making her a Speedster hero!

Continuing with the Legion of Progress before we move to the GGM's.
 
Avant Guardian
 
Nestor Delgado is an artist who through experimentation with a wide variety of techniques discovered his bizarre creations have the power to greatly change those who view and experience them. He first started using his art as therapy for people with psychological issues. The results were extraordinary in helping these individuals. Next he got involved in criminal rehabilitation and again had unprecedented positive results. He has continued to expand his reach and help people with his wholly unique works of art. He has attempted to pass on his techniques and skills, but there seems to be something special about him...hidden mutant ability, magic, spiritual influence? No one can say, but he is determined to continue to aid humanity's growth and transcendence with his abilities.

Oh, I know it's not my turn - but I just had to do this (before I forget, I'm old), cause I thought of it when reading the thread name, and couldn't (wait for my turn, cause I'd forget; did I say that?) help myself:
 
The Great Googly Moogly's
 
As in: "Great googly moogly" is an expression that had been uttered by Willie Dixon in Howlin' Wolf's 1961 recording of "Going Down Slow".
 
I think the fun is that the theme is whatever comes to your mind from the name...  May the mayhem begin.  You're welcome.

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.

Vamoose! 😀

"Hey Rocky, watch me pull a speedster out of my hat."
 
"But Bullwinkle, that trick never works."
 
And so Vamoose was born...

Vamoose! 😀

O-Jiro
 
...I wanted to do three first-person stories to bring this together, but that'd be too much....
O-Jiro is a larger-than-life, O-yoroi-wearing, No-Dachi-wielding proto-samurai of the Heian era, from just about exactly 1000 years ago.  He has superhuman strength, endurance, mental fortitude, and courage, and speaks in an archaic, aggressive, hypermasculine dialect, and, of course, is confused by modern Japanese colloquialisms and attitudes.  His armor, each of his many weapons, and just about every single item on him, is enchanted, each won in a separate epic struggle against some horrible demon/ogre/witch/evil deity/kappa/whatever, in the course of his eternal sojourn in the timeless mystical otherworld where he lives, married to a beautiful Kitsune and has dozens of children who never grow up.
His secret ID (in our world, in the present) is Jiro-kun, an apathetic young NEET (Not Employed, in Education or Training), who is periodically possessed by/transformed into the samurai superhero, but remembers the whole thing as time spent playing a really cool video game (that, as far as he can recall, just pops a 'new quest' message on his phone at random times), and is secretly in love with....
His DNPC, Sakura a young, clumsy, but very lucky, and very pretty, police woman stuck in an undesirable post of the Public Safety Bureau responsible for dealing with suicides in the context of public transportation (except when her hateful boss assigns her to something even worse), who was the first person O-Jiro met upon returning to the physical world and victoriously wrestling a giant iron serpent (subway train).  He was impressed with her beauty and pure heart, and gave her a magic whistle (which looks like a cheap plastic toy shaped like a fox, it even has 'made in taiwan' stamped on it) that summons him. 
 
 
Eventually, to escape her awful boss, and put O-Jiro's power to better use, Sakura contrives to get herself assigned as a police liaison to the 7 Samurai, who, I guess were the 6 samurai  until she started whistling up O-Jiro for them, or maybe they needed a replacement, IDK.
 
 
 

Rising Son
 
Rising Son is technically the last of the notorious 'Hiroshima Babies,' mutants born to mothers exposed to radiation by the bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.  His mother was 2 years old when the blast at Nagasaki killed her parents, took her sight, and scarred her face.  She lived, raised by poor relatives in a mountain village, unmarried both because of her appearance and the bad luck she was thought to represent.
Shortly before the bombs dropped, a certain young scion of an impoverished, nearly-forgotten samurai family had failed in his first and only act as a man:  his plane had been shot down and ditched a hundred yards short of his target as a kamikaze, he was 'rescued' by the very enemies he'd tried to give his life to kill, and ended the war in shame, a PoW.  After the war he took up the life deserved, as that lowest of all beings, a traveling salesman.
More than 20 years later a sad old man makes a sales call to a mountain village and meets a blind spinster, unaccountable bittersweet love blossoms between them, marriage and a child follow.  When the boy reaches puberty his mutant powers manifest, his father sees an opportunity to redeem his family's long-tainted honor, and he trains the boy in the ways of the samurai.
Rising Son has had a long career and has been both superhero and villain, his powers, too, have waxed and waned over the decades.   His original costume was simply white with the crimson-red circle of the Nisshōki on his chest, befitting his patriotism and his mutant powers:  he could absorb and generate solar energy, using it to fly, project solar blasts, or manifest a deadly 'sun sword.'   In his early career he fought criminals, supervillains and even kaiju all through the home islands, later joining international super-teams and often working in America (which was when the English code-name 'Rising Son' with the 'o' instead of 'u' stuck).  In keeping with his father's desire to redeem the family honor, he revealed his true identity and history once he had gained sufficient fame and regard to do so, and has since preferred to be addressed by his family name with honorific, but the codename stuck, especially with global media outlets.  He even wrote a book, got a movie deal, and did a long-running series of commercials for Asahi beer.
Towards the turn of the millennium, his powers waned nearly to the vanishing point, and increasingly disillusioned, he joined a mystical nationalist cabal that helped him restore his powers, added the rays of the Imperial flag to his costume and became widely regarded as a villain for the next decade, in which he operated only in Japan, and only "in the interests of Japan," which sometimes meant clashing with anti-nationalist demonstrators and even police, his now hybrid mystic-mutant powers fluctuated wildly and often failed him at the worst moment, as a result, he took to use flight less often.  He redeemed himself in 2011 when he entered a damaged nuclear reactor and absorbs enough of its energy to prevent a meltdown.   Rather than dying, his powers were restored to their former levels for a number of years to come.
Now in his 50s, Rising Son's mutant powers are again no longer dependable.  He has completely changed his costume choosing the form-concealing robes of an Edo-period samurai, complete with daisho, which he uses when he finds his powers at a low ebb (that now includes hours much after sunset as his body can no longer store much solar energy).  He's kept it a secret but, at dire need, he can use fissionable material to boost his powers, but it's not usually practical to carry around plutonium or enriched uranium.  He can also, though not consistently, re-start his powers by absorbing energy from an enemy's attack.  Fortunately, decades of experience and obsessive training in kendo and judo leave him well-able to contribute even when his powers fail him entirely.
Rising Son considers himself the elder and teacher of the group, and expects more respect and deference than he typically receives, leading to snarling cynical commentary and long periods of melodramatic brooding.  But, ultimately, he is loyal to and even protective of his teammates.
 
(I guess I was still in  'write a decades-long character history' mode from the other thread.) 
 
 

I used to GM for a superhero team that was kind of like Suicide Squad, but not actually villains... more just less-publicity-friendly heroes who had gotten a bad rap, or had edgier personalities, etc.  It was like Suicide Squad in that they were sponsored by an off-the-books, "black op" government agency that called them in when ordinary govt. agents couldn't cut it, and they were sort of deemed expendable (or at least, disavowable). Their charter allowed them greater freedom of action, so they could take steps ordinary police or other govt. agents couldn't
 
They were the Proscribed-Operations Level Ten Emergency Reserve, Government-Endorsed International Superhuman Team  (P.O.L.T.E.R.G.E.I.S.T.)