Open Source Super-Team?

A post in another thread about a Jenny Everywhere/Outworlder/Astro-Man team up being the "Open Source Avengers," so to speak, gave me this idea. My first comic, while being the Outworlder's origin story, was also a team-up story. I intended to continue team-ups and establish a Justice League/Avengers type team with a some core members and rotating lesser members. Argosail's comment got me thinking, maybe we could establish such a team in the Free Universe. While anyone could put together their own team with their own name, of course, we could still come up with a team name and core roster that would be free for everyone to use.

The team I was going to put together I was thinking of calling The Peacemakers. The only comic related use of that term I've found is a low-tier DC/Charlton character. We could use that name or come up with another one.

As for the roster, I think the core members should be open-source characters rather than the Golden Age public domain characters. My core team idea currently includes Jenny Everywhere (since she is the original open source character), The Outworlder (being biased), Jackpott (again, being biased), and Astro-Man (because I really like the idea of him). Once the armored character is finalized he could be added as well. I figure Powerball and Battle-Cry for back-up members (being biased again). Naturally, every author/artist will have their own idea about specific members, but we could come up with a baseline team make-up.

What do you think?

Peacemakers sounds like a good name for a team.

I like your idea of having Astro-Man & Outworlder on the team. Out of all the Open Source characters I've seen, they are my favorites. I can't honestly say I've been impressed with Jenny Everywhere, even though she's the most popular Open Source character I've seen based on the number of articles I've read about "OS" heroes. However, she's come across to me as being nothing more than a head-shot, a name and "she can whatever you want her to do" abilities, and that's just not much of a character in my eyes.

Just my opinion, but I feel that if members of the Free Universe are building a team, the characters should at least be coming from the collabrative efforts of this forum. Obviously, anyone can add whatever character they want to the team (like Jenny) when creating their own stories, but my personal preference is to see The Peacemakers be originally comprised of Free Universe characters, with an "any character can be a member" rule for membership.

This is something I've been planning and contemplating. If you look at some of the profiles on my Free Universe site, you will see that I am already assigning teams to some of the character there. Unfortunately, there aren't really any established PD teams, so we will have to come up with a few. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

Peacemakers - Great name. I agree that the membership should be open to any creator, but it would be cool to have Astro-Man and Outworlder as regular members, as well as other open source arch-types. I can see arguments for and against Jenny Everywhere being on the team. While she should definitely be an ally, Jenny in my mind, is more of a human adventurer than a "super-hero" per-se. Powerball, Battle-Cry and Jackpott would also be fine additions to the team, although, again, Jackpott strikes me as a little more of a loner. If we get that armored hero suited up, he would be the next regular member.

The New Furies - This is a team membership I've been assigning to some of the heroes. However, it is not a conventional super-team. It is more like the Defenders or specifically, The Secret Defenders. The team roster always rotates, depending on the needs of the mission. Like the Greek furies, only three members of the team come together for a mission. They are brought together by the unseen spirit "Fate," which is a Golden Age PD character. The members of the New Furies are usually on the aggressive side. So far, I've assigned Daredevil, Black Terror, The Shark, and a few others.

The Guardian Guild - Another name for a relatively generic hero team. Perhaps a networking organization for Superheroes with a core team.

The Deadly Dozen - They were one of the first teams of supervillains, why not change up the membership with new villains. The only rule is there must be 12, and they must be killers. I don't assign big bosses, because this is a team of mercenaries and assassins. I've already assigned some of the deadliest villains to the team, including Cobra, Clown, Baron Doom, White Terror, The Torch, etc. I also intend to add Iron Jaw and a few others.

With all these proposed open source characters and ones that already exist, wonder if a separate forum or webpage might be created for the sole purpose of offering them to the general public at large?

Just a thought.

Also has anyone really used any open source characters besides Jenny Everywhere/Jenny Nowhere and Octobriana? These are the only two I've seen that have actually made appearances in comics or have comics. (I don't have them but have seen them elsewhere on the web).

Well, do you mean used as in a printed comic or a webcomic. Octobriana (who is more PD than OS) has appeared in multiple print comics. Jenny Everywhere has one print comic from Indy Planet (drawn by Atomic Robo's Scott Wegener!). She has been used in dozens of webcomics, though.

So, if you mean used as in webcomics, I have a webcomic that uses the Outworlder, Jackpott, Cyber-Knight, Powerball and Battle-Cry. It's actually the comic I drew years ago after a buddy and I created the characters. I was never able to print it then and ended up publishing it online. The decision to make the characters OS came last year. Now I've made the whole story OS. My second story, which includes Jenny Everywhere, isn't finished yet.

http://outworlder.comicdish.com

Yes, I meant print comics.

Octobriana came about in the '70s and has starred or guest starred in a few comics.

Jenny Everywhere was created in 2002. She was the first of the "open source" characters, and, as far as I know, the only one until I decided to make the Outworlder & Co open source last year. A few other people then released some characters on the PDSH wiki also, followed by the work here. So most of these characters are pretty new and have not been used much at all yet. Jenny has only appeared, to my knowledge, in 2 print comics so far (3 if you count Tiajuana Bibles). One was around 2003 and only saw around 50 copies printed. The other is the one available on Indy Planet, which was only finally made available in August 2009, despite having been completed in 2005.

I think the immediate future for Open Source heroes will be web comics, since I can't see an established comic company using the characters when they have their own to choose from or revamp, and probably most self-publishing & Indy creators have their own characters they want to focus on. However, I can see "amateurs" taking a crack at some "OS" heroes as they get into drawing & creating their own comic stories.

My opinion is that the Open Source characters, as of right now, lack a following and simply aren't well-known enough for someone to say "I want to use that character". Jenny Everywhere lucks-out by being mentioned in a few articles that talk about Public Domain & Open Source comic characters, so her name is getting out there ... she has a little bit of name recognition, which is the first step in a character being drawn by someone who didn't have a hand in the creation process.

I think Astro-Man (who is not even a month old yet) has everything he needs to be a real "break-out star" for Open Source characters, and will probably surpass Jenny Everywhere in popularity (depending on the stories he apperas in). That's not to say he's the comic industry's next Batman or Spider-Man, but in the right hands, who knows how popular he could be?

One thing you have to keep in mind, is that the entire concept of "Open Source" characters is fairly new. Octobriana isn't really open source, she is public domain. Jenny Everywhere was really the first open source character and she's picking up steam, but it will take time for her to make a lot of appearances. Mike's Outworlder characters are great, but, in honesty, very obscure...the only people who know they are open source are fans of PDSH wiki, and even there, they tend to be obscured by the hundreds of public domain characters on the site. Astro-Man has a few advantages going for him...first, multiple people are invested in him, and second...he fits the Superman nitch better than most of the PD characters. Already, we know that Dan and Mike are interested in using him in online comics. I did a rough sketch of an Outworlder/Astro-Man team up last night, which I will publish, when I have time to make it look pretty. So, Astro-Man already has 3 potential appearances, when currently only about 10-20 people even know about him. The more we put him out there, the more likely others will be interested in using him, and like Jenny Everywhere, it will snowball. Personally, I don't think Jenny is even done her snowball ride, and Asto-Man as a well-defined super-hero has even more potential use in comics. So bchat may be correct about him potentially being even bigger than Jenny. We don't know, because I don't think anyone has tried to create a superhero character in this manner before.

My Free Universe site is a little more limited in its range of characters than PDSH wiki, but I am making the effort to promote good open source characters there. Astro-Man, Fantastic Jack, and other characters (including the remaining Outworlder characters) will be getting profiles there. I will be adding a few of my own original open source characters as well, including (SPOILER ALERT) my "cool" new villain, Chill Axe (who I think would be a perfect enemy for Jack)! I prefer writing stories about more human-level characters, but over the years I've come up with some pretty badass superhero character concepts. Since I likely won't use them myself, I will be donating them to the Open Source ranks. The Free Universe will have an awesome library of characters when I'm done, both PD and OS.

Hundreds of years ago, the Peacemakers were an order of heroes from across the galaxy, gathered together to defend the common good. But one day the entire order were set against an enemy they could not defeat: the Virons, who sowed destruction throughout the galaxy. They came together in the battle of Ashkar Nebula, which was a catastrophic loss for both sides. For seven days the battle raged on, the bloodiest ever fought in the history of the galaxy. The corpses of its dead are still found floating in space to this day. The Viron warriors were all but destroyed and retreated to their own damaged homeworld, their powers greatly diminished. But the Peacemakers were dead almost to a man.

After the fall of the Peacemakers the galaxy fell into chaos. Its different civilizations fell into wars which grew more and more bloody and cruel. Inhabitants of broken and poisoned worlds sought to invade the still-habitable ones, such as the backwater world called Earth. But the aliens had the bad luck of invading Earth just as it was entering a new age of heroes. It became famous as the planet no one could conquer.

Now the Virons have been reuinited at great cost by Kalthar. who with his ferocious general Goldenmane has begun a last desparate attempt to conquer Earth. He hopes to shape its potential heroes into an army that can defeat all the others in the galaxy. The ghost of Sarnath, a great Peacemaker who died at Ashkar by Kalthar's own hands, has returned from the grave and joined with the human called Michael Degner to become the Outworlder. At the same time a Viron descendent called Stephen Hiromatsu had his powers fully activated by the Viron Astro-pulse, becoming the hero called Astro-Man. The two heroes joined together with their world's counterpart of Jenny Everywhere to battle the Viron threat. They decided to stay together as a team who would fight the threats too great for a single hero. They took the name of the Peacemakers, who stood against the Virons long ago.

Over the next thousand years the new Peacemakers will grow in strength and power and once more spread throughout the galaxy. In one possible future, they are the guardians of a revived galactic civilization, full of promises and problems. In another they are a fascist dictatorship ruled by the tyrant Lord Kron, who sends his minions through time and space to prevent any other fate from coming about. But for now, the Peacemakers are three people in an abandoned government base outside of Chicago.

[I'll likely post more tomorrow on possible team dynamics and further members, how Jenny fits onto the team (or doesn't), possible enemies, etc.]

This sounds really cool. I'm currently planning to re-draw and re-edit the Outworlder origin story for a POD comic. I just might use some of this. Great stuff.

The Setting:

Although they might be located in different places as individuals (Astro-Man would be around a major observatory somewhere), as a team I'd suggest that the Peacemakers be located in Chicago. It's one of the quintessential American cities, but it's unexplored territory as far as superheroes are concerned. Most of them tend to be located on the East Coast or sometimes the West Coast, leaving the Midwest uncovered. (Although the Flash's hometown of Central City has usually been located somewhere in the midwest.) It's also a city with a long tradition of crime, the city that gave the world Al Capone. The state of Illinois is in a particularly bad way right now due to the US's recent economic woes. The instability might provide the spur that people who would otherwise hesitate need to push them into being full-on supervillains, and provide a situation that others could take advantage of…

The Core Team:

We all have a sense of the the character dynamics and interactions of the "Big Three" of the JLA (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) and the Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor). How about the three founders and core members of the Peacemakers? This is of course only my interpretation, alternate interpretations are welcome:

Everyone here has a sense of Astro-Man's character by now. He's a consummate leader, very much the superhero's superhero. He embodies the particular set of virtues that most superheroes value the most. He's brave, dedicated, and above all kind, a rare virtue in the combative world of superheroes. He has the capacity to see the good in other people and connect with that. In spite of his inherent charisma and ability to connect with people, he's a little socially awkward, especially at the beginning of his career. Mostly he comes off as being a little on the melancholic/phlegmatic side, but he does get angry at times, especially when dealing with injustice, and his anger is not to be trifled with. And he gets deeply frustrated with having to give leadership for certain people, including, at times, the Outworlder.

The Outworlder is a sharp contrast to Astro-Man as a character. He's still a teenager, and as such he has intense, confusing emotions that he's not very good at dealing with. He's also much less intellectual and more physical. His powers are primarily offensive where Astro-Man's are primarily defensive, and their personalities reflect that. The Outworlder's first instinct for dealing with problems is to punch or zap them, which doesn't always work. Sarnath chose him because he saw that Michael had the potential to become a true hero but would need a fair amount of guidance to do it. He respects Astro-Man but also sometimes resents him because he appears to do easily what Outworlder has to really struggle to do. (In fact it's not really easy for Astro-Man at all.) He's also troubled because of problems he faces in his normal life. His future after high school is far from certain, and he's not exactly happy having an alien ghost looking over his shoulder all the time. Sarnath is diametrically opposite to him in personality, contemplative and peaceful where Michael is active and brash. For the record, unlike in the original Outworlder comic, I tend to picture him as being humanoid, but there are definitely advantages to having him be more visibly alien.

Jenny Everywhere is admittedly an odd fit on the Peacemakers in some ways. You can definitely make the case she's more Defenders material than Avengers material. She's fundamentally not a superhero, though she can seem like one at times. She is first and foremost and adventurer and explorer. She operates on the fringes of the superhero world and spends much of her time fighting enemies that most people couldn't even imagine, such as the various facets of Nyarlathotep. But she fits very well with the team's current agenda of dealing with alien threats, since her own explorations and her multifaceted consciousness enable her to have a good understanding of alien technology and mentalities. In combat terms she's the Batman of the team--a brilliant martial artist, gadgeteer, and strategist--though in terms of personality she could not possibly be more different from (most contemporary versions of) Batman.

In terms of personality, she's similar to Astro-Man in some ways but quite different in others. Like Astro-Man, she has a deep sense of kinds and compassion and strong leadership skills, and a strong regard for the ordinary humans who often get forgotten in the ritualized world of super-combat. As Paul Cornell said of the Doctor, she loves bigly. But the thing about Jenny is that she's really, really weird. People tend to instinctively like her and be drawn to her but also be instinctively weirded out by her. Astro-Man is an exemplary superhero, the embodiment of what his culture values, but no one really knows what to make of Jenny. Perhaps Astro-Man is more of an analytical thinker, whereas Jenny tends to be most comfortable thinking on the seat of her pants. Astro-Man tends to hold his emotions in reserve, while Jenny is someone who tends to wear her heart on her sleeve.

Due to her being linked to all her alternate selves, her consciousness is fundamentally different from anyone else's. It is both more wide-ranging and more deeply concentrated. She doesn't just think outside the box, she doesn't think anywhere near the box. She builds entirely new boxes and then breaks them. She can sometimes be found reading several books at once. Her consciousness of the full depth and breadth of existence enhances her sense of wonder, but also her sense of loss. People who don't know her tend to assume her enormous joy and appetite for life come from naivety, but in fact from her memories of a wide range of experiences she knows the full depths of human evil and futility. Many of the people she encounters in life are those she knows from other worlds, and she must deal with the painful memories of alternate lives gone wrong, and the bittersweet memory of alternate lives gone right that she cannot relive. But for all that she never wallows in angst. She experiences intense joy and pain at once, and they are inseparable.

In terms of age, when they're starting out Astro-Man is 25, Jenny is 20, and Outworlder is 17. In terms of religious affiliation (and again, I want to emphasize that this is only my own perception), I'd play against type somewhat with Astro-Man and have him be an atheist, partially because he reminds me a little bit of a friend of mine who's an astronomer and an atheist. Whereas Talib maintains some kind of vaguely Deistic faith in God. Michael Degner is an evangelical Christian, but one who is increasingly conflicted in his faith because he doesn't know how to reconcile it with all the Weird Cosmic **** he undergoes. The version of Jenny who associates with them is Catholic, reflecting a religious sensibility that emphasizes unity within multiplicity and the value of suffering. This is very much not true of other versions of her, though. Jenny often has philosophical arguments with her other selves, sometimes out loud.

[Hopefully, I'll be able to spare some time tomorrow from injecting life into my recalcitrant freshmen to record my thoughts about the Viron leaders, the Dark Alliance, Chandra, and so forth. And given all the thought I've been putting into these characters, I should probably write an actual story with some of them rather than just braindumping. If I can spare time from writing my own stories, including the ones about my own superhero team I came up with before I got involved in this project (which as it happens can't fit in the same continuity because Jenny Everywhere plays a completely different role in them) as well as writing papers and presentations for graduate classes and drawing up lectures and group activities for my own students… Which means probably not this semester. Or ever. But who knows.]

Well, anyone who may have read my latest thread of characters may have noticed that I include mention of another Superteam within some of those bios. This team is called the League of Destiny.

In my standard manner of deconstructing heroes and making them generally unlikeable company, the League of Destiny was thought up as a team of heroes who get tired of always having to put on the good face for the public, and who sometimes want to kick back, or perhaps even build up a new persona after some disaster or scandal that tarnished the good name of their original hero alias. With a core of seven founders, the team expanded the actual roster of the team. It now numbers in the tens or perhaps even above a hundred, as the telepath coordinator calls upon particular people to suit particular missions.

All members of the team are free to hang around at the headquarters, which given that this is a partial deconstruction/parody of the Justice League is a giant spacestation, and just be themselves. Generally for missions the people take on codenames that begin with D, such as Omega Frost becoming Deepfreeze, Worldhopper becoming Dimensional, etc etc. The team is 'global' in that it has people scattered across the world, but wouldn't be officially sponsored by any nation because they're essentially a band of dicks and disaster areas who don't conform to the shining template of Astro-Man and other such heroes. In a way, they're almost comparative to the Outsiders, in that they'll do what's necessary even if people will hate them for it, but they're also just a very dysfunctional group.

The core seven are as follows:

Definativeguy: The archtypical paragon, his powers are flight, superstrength, durability, etc etc. He's the guy who came up with the idea for the group when reinventing himself from his previous alias of Ultravox after a public scandal, and is the so-called leader of the group. In reality, he's an old coot of some 80 years or so, steadily going senile and fixed in his old fashioned ways. Despite this, he's the undisputed powerhouse of the League and thus remains valuable.

Demarche: The second-in-command, Demarche is the team coordinator, as his power is vast telepathic ability, allowing him to mentally link up the various team members for mental communication and to track logistics and coordinate strategies. He works out of the Tower and rarely attends field missions.

Dashguy: The speedster of the team, he's the hit-and-run guy and the one used for speed missions, and serves as a secondary relay when Demarche is out of action.

Deflagra: The 'heavy firepower' of the team, she's a skilled pyrokinetic.

Dimensiongate: The transporter of the group, his techsuit allows him to teleport short range, as well as create open portals to transport the rest of the team from place to place. His fighting style is centred on his teleporting.

Deep Diva: Something of a tag-along, this girl is an aquatic humanoid from the depths of the ocean. She was cast out from her tribe for her paramutations, but it is these same traits that allow her to actually survive above the crushing pressures of the deep for short periods of time. Not beautiful looking, rather somewhat scaly and having aquatic adaptations, her superpowers are merely the side results of her aquatic physiology.

I, Detic: Blessed with photographic memory and reflexes, Detic is otherwise purely baseline. She's a highly trained gadgeteer with the ability to instantaneously learn and recall anything she experiences. She's mastered speed reading and listening and the like, and acts as a 'mental database' for the team. She's always got some pointless trivia and a whacked-out design for just the situation in her head.

Wow, sorry it has taken me so long to reply, but I needed a night where I could sit down and read some of the volumes of ideas that have been posted on the boards recently. You guys have some great thoughts and I applaud your creativity. Just hope you will understand my need to process all of it.

OK, Knight Random, loving most of your ideas. I disagree with a few. For one thing, I think the alien spirit who inhabits Outworlder should continue to be true to Mike's vision. Those are actually some interesting looking aliens, and I don't like the idea of every form of intelligent life in the galaxy being completely humanoid, as they are in many fictional universes. I like diversity.

Another thing is, I'd stay away from religion and politics with comic characters. I understand those may be popular topics in some of the more adult comics, but most comic fans are really looking for escapism and fun, and making characters distinctly affiliated with one group or another can make you resent not only the characters, but how they are depicted. For example, if a creator depicts a character as really wise, when they belong to one group, and kinda ignorant or stereotypical when they belong to another group, it can be pretty irritating. Look at Superman....I don't think anyone has ever really tried to define his religion or political affiliation. For that reason, no matter who you are, you still get the sense that Superman would be on YOUR side. He's just a proud American, and that is why he is popular with all Americans. I think Green Arrow and Hawkman are the only major characters who have real political/religious affiliations assigned to them, and I like them both a little less because of it. I no longer have any respect at all for the Savage Dragon character, because Larsen has no respect for anyone's views but his own. I prefer that heroes just concentrate on being affiliated with justice and honor. Their personal philosophies can be suggested independently of deliberate labels.

As far as Jenny Everywhere, I think she should be the one who brings the team together and often warns them of a coming crisis, but I wouldn't put her into battle with them. Although she can be depicted as a teleporter or someone who can bring things in from other worlds, she is, generally speaking, not a superhero and would be a constant liability to the team. I would recommend trying to come up with some more arch types to fill out the team.

Reserve members of the team could include Jenny, Hercules (since he is immortal and he would make a fine brick), Astro-Girl and the supporting heroes in Outworlder.

Vagrant,

I like your team too. Reminds me of the "League" in "The Tick." Did you draw all those characters or use some kind of hero-maker program? They look super awesome.

To break up the number of "guys" on the team, I would make dashguy into dashman.

Drew them up, scanned them in and cleaned them up. Think I used a team-up comic cover as the reference for it, but can't remember what, since I did it a long time ago. Notice the lack of Deep Diva, this is because I was never able to settle on exactly how I wanted her to look, and could never get the look right on paper.

I'll say one thing, I'm *very* pleased with how Dashguy/Dashman looks, since it's hard nowadays to make a unique looking speedster, I think. Also, I went through many, many color palette for Definativeguy before I settled on the cheesy American-flag look. If you guys want I can show you the other mock colors I came up with for him, but that's mainly a moot point since there's only 1 or 2 of those color palettes I'd consider using for him.

Definativeguy is all-American, Deflagra is Russian or Serbian or something, Dash is Spanish, Detic is Middle-Eastern (or perhaps Mediterranean, I'm not quite sure), Demarche is Black British and Dimensiongate is actually Asian-Oceanic. The blonde hair is dyed, and his blue eyes are actually glowing blue implants. From the cartoon image he just looks Caucasian, but he's supposed to be teched-up Asian.

I agree, Dashguy/man has a great looking outfit. He's very unique, but you can still tell he's a speedster. You did a great job on the art too. Any plans to illustrate Fantastic Jack or your other characters? I'd love to see them. These guys are intended to be open source? Might we add them to PDSH wiki and would we be using the standard notation for open source characters? Have you thought about illustrating an online comic about these guys?

I hope these characters are open source, because otherwise you might accuse me of stealing some of your ideas. Looking at your characters, Deflagra and Dimensiongate are almost exactly like two characters that I came up with (about 15 years ago). I won't name my versions until I can use them, because my characters had very unique names and I want to keep them proprietary. However, I can tell you that I have created my own sexy Russian pyrokinetic woman (although my version is a psychopathic assassin in a yellow outfit). I also created a teleporter, and I imagined him looking much like Dimensiongate does. The difference though is that my version is a little more steam punk. The characters in my universe are intended to be more scientifically plausible than characters from a standard superhero universe.

Speaking of coincidences, Knight Random discussed that he once came up with a hero named "Astro-Man" and said that his version was an astronaut. Well, I'm the one who suggested the name Astro-Man because I had intended to use the name for a Superman-like hero, and my version of Astro-Man was also intended to be an astronaut who obtained his powers from an alien source. However, I gave up the name, because I've renamed that character, and he will also be joining the ranks of the public domain soon (but I want to properly introduce him in a story).

Anyway, I just have to say it's amazing how people can come up with similar ideas independently. It's a good argument for freely sharing ideas.

Unfortunately, I'm not great at drawing comics of any form, I can't seem to get most poses right, so an online comic is a no-go. All characters I've mentioned on this site I intend to now be open-source, whether it be the ones with the big bios I posted in my other thread, or the seven League members here. That means they're all free to add to the open source wiki.

I probably will give a shot at at least getting a visual on my other characters sometime soon, see if I can at least give an impression of what they look like.

Vagrant, I've definitely been enjoying your stuff. You're so prolific you're scaring me a bit, in a good way. And you can certainly draw better than me!

Argosail, thanks for your comments. The part about religion was just my own interpretation, which I intended to stimulate discussion and debate. But I do think Jenny Everywhere belongs on the Peacemakers. Both the Avengers and the JLA have members that have no superpowers and battle powerful villains with their fighting skills, gadgets, and/or leadership skills including Batman and Captain America (whose strength was enhanced by artificial means but is still peak human). Jenny Everywhere's lack of superpowers by no means suggests that she'd be a liability in combat. Each version of her has considerable intelligence and determination which they would choose to concentrate in different areas. This Jenny is a brilliant gadgeteer, martial artist, and leader, partially because of the knowledge she possesses from her other selves. Think of how Batman was able to defeat the White Martians in the first arc of JLA, or how he took on Grodd using his "sci-fi closet" in JLA Classified. That's the kind of thing Jenny Everywhere would be capable of when she reaches her full potential. Grant Morrison was able to have Batman work with the heavy hitters by effectively portraying his consciousness as a superpower. Jenny Everywhere's consciousness really is a superpower, because it has to be superhumanly wide-ranging and organized to process the memories of her counterparts.

And now I just realized I've been arguing about a character's power levels. Am I turning into one of those comic fans? Oh dear...

Haha...it's okay Knight. THOSE comic fans are welcome here. C'mon, you can't be too serious when you're talking about guys who shoot lasers out of their eyes.

If Jenny entered combat with the Peacemakers, we'd have to be using a Shifter on steroids. The thing about Batman and Cap, is they have always been fighters. Batman has been portrayed as arguably one of the most powerful superheroes of all time, using gadgets and strategy to take on the likes of Superman. In one crossover, he defeated ALL of the X-men by himself. Cap is usually portrayed more realistically, as the team's leader and strategist, usually relegated to fighting other human level characters, or merely distracting a Thor foe, while Thor gets back to his feet. I could see Jenny serving a similar purpose as leader of the Peacemakers, but you'd have to make her a teleporting martial artist or something to give her enough edge to survive battles. Batman has his agility, gadgets and the shadows in which to survive. Cap has his shield. Jenny would need to be able to "shift" out of the way of Omega beams and such. Because if she was just a scrappy adventurer, as she is usually portrayed, she wouldn't last long against old Kalthar.

Now, this is a good nerdversation!

Vagrant, I think your art style would be perfect for Fantastic Jack. He's still my favorite!

I'm just curious, with all the proposed Open Source Characters , do all the authors think they will be comfortable IF said creations are featured in a comic book which is profitable?

Do you think you'd be comfortable if that comes to fruition? Not receiving any profit from your idea(s)?

I can't speak for the others, but the characters I will be donating to the public, are ones that I have held onto for 15-20 years, and which have yet to produce a penny in my pocket. Bottom line is, I have created hundreds of characters over the years, and I don't personally have the time to develop every single one to their full potential. So, if there is someone else who can, then my attitude is, more power to them. I would be honored to see my characters get some recognition and use. And the thing is...it benefits me if they do. Because if I ever decide to develop the stories I originally intended to develop, I can still use my character, but now there is already some public recognition of that character, which gives my work a better chance.

Think about this: if I made a profitable comic series based on Vagrant's characters, without any help from him, am I not the one who deserves the money for writing and drawing a great comic? BUT, if Vagrant wanted to do his own series later, the public already knows about his characters thank to my successful endeavors. My work basically serves as an advertisement for his work, making his success more likely.

Short answer: I would have no problem with people making money off of my characters, as long as I could still use them myself. Developing a name and a costume design and some powers is not nearly as hard as developing a good comic or book or movie or whatever.

The main enemies of the new Peacemakers in the first phase of their existence are the Virons. Their invasion force is led by, among others:

Kalthar: Some say that Kalthar was evil from the moment of his birth. That he drained the life from his mother to increase his own power. That he was raised by carrion birds who fed him the blood of the slain. That his father died in battle before he was conceived and it was Death that came into his mother's bed inside his father's corpse.

Others say that Kalthar was born as any other Viron and truly became the man he is in the battle of Ir, the second-worst battle of the First Viron War. The Peacemakers had narrowly won the battle and a battalion of them, drunk with excitement and brutalized after days of constant fighting, swooped down and began killing everyone in sight, including children. Kalthar was ten years old at the time. He rose from the pit of corpses the Peacemakers had made and began to unleash the full fury of his power, cutting every one of them down. There were twenty in that battalion and only one who fled survived. The few Peacemakers who had claimed the world retreated, having heard the enemy had a demon on their side.

Kalthar became one of the greatest warriors of all the Virons, feared by all and loved by none. He was one of the few on the front lines who survived the battle of Ashkar. His cruelty was more than equalled by his strategic acumen, and the surviving Virons flocked to him as the leader who would help them survive in the war-torn, chaotic galaxy that followed the Peacemakers' fall. He led centuries of bloody wars to reunify the Virons and regain control of some of their old colony worlds. Now he has begun the invasion of Earth, which he hopes will be the stepping stone to the conquest of the universe.

Kalthar has been using his powers for centuries and possesses the most control of them of any Viron. Besides all of Astro-Man's powers, he can also cast an unstoppable fear on the minds of his enemies, which only the very strong-willed can resist. He was born from lineages based on several different species but most prominently the Urizen, who were said to have once ruled the entire galaxy. Voriel, the possibly legendary founder of the Peacemakers, is said to have been one of them.

Goldenmane: The monstrous, leonine Goldenmane is physically the strongest of all the Virons. In battle his power is channeled into "warp-spasms" similar to the Irish hero Cuchulainn, which distort his body and grant him enormous strength. However, he cannot control himself while he is undergoing these states. So his usual strategy is to send minions to wear down his enemies, isolate them and then move in for the kill himself. While ferocious and cunning, he has very poor impulse control and thus cannot equal Kalthar as leader. He comes from a lineage based on the beastmen of Graak, some of the most feared warriors in the galaxy. He has concentrated his efforts on killing the Outworlder.

Tenebrax: Tenebrax is the consort of Kalthar and his master spy. She is plotting to kill Kalthar and take over the Virons through Goldenmane, who is easier for her to control.

Since her astro-force is channeled into her mental powers, she is physically weak compared to other Virons but possesses considerable psychic and arcane powers as well as great cunning. Her mind is directly connected to Nemesis the Anti-Sun which speaks to her in her dreams. Physically she is a gaunt, emaciated creature dressed in black robes, with a head that resembles a shriveled squid.

Her powers allow her to summon up shadows, warp space, create illusions and dominate the weak-willed. Her symbiotic familiar, which enhances her psychic powers and her connection to Nemesis, is Dunsinane, a cyclopean lizard/cat-like creature. She is of a lineage derived from the Eldrakth, a secretive species of vastly powerful but mostly peaceful psychics and mages who dwell in the galactic core.

Just as Kalthar is a particular enemy of Astro-Man and Goldenmane of Outworlder, so Tenebrax is of Jenny Everywhere. Her powers of illusion and mind control allow her to coordinate the Viron plots on Earth, and Jenny Everywhere possesses strength of will and perception that allows her to see through her plans. Her counterparts have fought Jenny on other worlds as well. Some of them went on to become allies and friends of hers--like many shonen manga heroes, many of Jenny often makes friends of people she defeated earlier--but that is very unlikely to be the case for this one.

Also: As to Jenny Everywhere and her place in the team, her creator actually originally came up with her as part of a sueprhero team his friends made up, which never came to pass. Of course IIRC that team was loosely inspired by the Claremont X-Men, who were rather scrappy in their own right. Early on, their role as superhero underdogs who had to really earn their victories was part of their appeal, which got lost once as they crossed the Mary-Sue line and especially once Claremont left. (I actually see the early New Peacemakers as being not totally dissimilar--they're just starting out and getting their act together, so things might be a little rough at first.) I might email him (Jenny Everywhere's creator, not Chris Claremont) to ask how he would have incorporated her into the team.

If you can get any of Jenny's creators to input on our conversation here, that would be awesome. I'd love to hear what they have to say.

The Kalthar origin cracks me up. Especially the part about the clarion birds and death taking the form of his father. Now that's evil. Although it might be encroaching on Thanos a little bit with the whole killing his mom/servant of death thing. Still, I like the sheer evilness of it all.

It sounds to me like your vision of the Virons is that they are more like a diverse alliance of various alien races like the "Covenant" in Halo, or the Invid in Robotech, or the Xindi in the Enterprise series. Also that the majority of these aliens have some kind of superhuman powers.

Yzz originally created the idea of the Virons as a race struggling to regain some footing as a power in the universe. To that end, I envisioned them, not as super powered beings, but as would-be conquerors like the Kree, Skrulls, Klingons, etc. I imagined them as the Free Universe equivalent of those races, so that the foot soldiers could be hero fodder, while Kalthar remains the true threat. If they all had some degree of power over Astro-Waves they would conquer the universe with ease.

My idea of Kalthar was that his powers were actually the direct result of genetic engineering...meaning that he doesn't actually have a mother or father. He knew that the Astro Pulse would activate his power and wipe out most of his people, but that is why he specifically assassinated all other genetically engineered "Super Virons" and only bothered to save an army of soldiers that were completely loyal to him.

I think Kalthar would be okay with working with a SMALL team of Super Virons like Tenebrax, but only provided that he believes them to be significantly less powerful than himself. He would not trust anyone that could actually defeat him. That still leaves room for others to be very powerful, SINCE Kalthar himself is simply off the charts.

I definitely like the idea of Tenebrax.

I like the idea of Goldenmane being an ally or an agent of the Virons, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to say he IS a Viron. He looks human. I'm not sure what Mike's vision is for that character, but I'd love to hear his take on it.

I've been thinking of doing a Cuchularain comic online. I have concept art of his battle form, and it is nasty and wicked. Do you think Goldenman might be of the same race or lineage?

As to Kalthar, I meant the first origin was meant to be a legend other people would tell about him. Like Astro-Man, he is an iconic figure, someone who inspires the dreams or nightmares of others. Of course, the whole point of the project is to leave room for different interpretations.

With the Virons, since they sent out Super-Viron agents to infiltrate different races, I assumed that unlike Hiromatsu they'd interbreed with the different races they conquered, and in turn they would with other Viron bloodlines. Although Kalthar claims to be a pure-blooded Viron, there are none left in the universe. And so they are one species but bear the mark of a wide variety of others they'd formerly conquered.