Open Source Super-Team?

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.

Oh, I totally get where you were going with the "legend of Kalthar" stuff. It just made me laugh because it was sooooo over-the-top evil. "Fed blood by clarion birds." Haha....I love it. I will definitely incorporate that when I write his bio. Too good not to use.

Your interpretation of the Virons is definitely valid and interesting, it's just not exactly what I had in mind. I was going off Yzz's original idea that Astro-Man had been sent to Earth to raise a human army to aid the Virons in their conquest. We didn't want to make Astro-Man too similar to Superman in origin, so I said his ancestor was alien instead of him, and extrapolated this plan would not be limited to earth. My idea was that each agent was cloned from a native of the planet they were going to be sent to with additional super-soldier genes spliced in. They were then raised and indoctrinated on Viro and sent out to other worlds to raise an army (not necessarily conquer). This would mean that there would be members of many races with the same powers as Astro-Man, and some would align with the Virons as planned, and some would want to defend the worlds they were raised on, eventually forming an "Astro-Corps." Kalthar would then be the leader of the full blooded Virons, intent on uniting worlds against his enemies who had impeded Viron conquest in the past. Those enemies, could, of course, include the Peacemakers as you described them.

But now I understand why you see the Virons as an alliance of super powerful beings from various races.

Here is a concept drawing of The Peacemakers as we've discussed. It is freely licensed to members of these boards and PDSH wiki (if someone wants to post it in an article).



I think that use of the Peacemakers team should be licensed with the following paragraph:

"The Peacemakers team and the individual characters of Flux, Outworlder, Astro-Man, Dr. Acacia and Jenny Everywhere are available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving The Peacemakers team and its corresponding characters, in order that others may use these properties as they wish. All rights reversed."

Now, clearly that isn't exactly the wording on the individual character licenses, but I think it is close enough that the original creators of these characters and other users will not be displeased.

Transmooky, are you cool with Flux being licensed in this manner?

I was going to add Cosmic Custodian to this team, but I was concerned about the licensing statement for that character being different and requiring acknowledgment of the creator. I fear two things with that. First, if each character requires acknowledgment of the author, it would require a separate paragraph for each which would be cumbersome when using a whole team of characters. You couldn't combine the paragraphs, because then you wouldn't know who created what. Second, I fear that this requirement may discourage the use of the characters, so it might be better to separate out characters with special licensing conditions. Cosmic Custodian will be receiving a profile on The Free Universe with Team Affiliation: Peacemakers (Reserve)...

Now here are my thoughts on the Peacemakers and you can use this on the wiki if you want:

"The Peacemakers are led into battle by the highly analytical and tactical mind of Astro-Man, who is also the team's physical powerhouse. While Astro-Man's abilities and tactics tend to be more defensive in nature, Outworlder is more offensive in both abilities and personality. He is the team's hot headed rogue, willing to bring the fight to the enemy when others are more cautious. This tempestuous passion has won him both the admiration and the concern of Flux (though for appearances, she maintains that he is too young for her, and calls him a boy when she's mad). Flux can be a little wild and immature herself, but she brings compassion to the team which helps to balance Outworlder's aggression and Astro-Man's tendency toward cold, hard logic. Dr. Acacia is the team's mysterious loner. Though his magic frequently saves the day, he tends to creep out his team mates a little. This may have something to do with the fact that Acaia can often see forces at work, that the others can not. Sometimes Acaia is willing to share his disturbing visions and knowledge with the team, but sometimes, he seems to prefer to secretly manipulate the team's missions to accomplish goals which are far more important than anyone else knows. Jenny Everywhere brought the team together for the first time. She advises the team and is the one who sends them on their missions in the first place. In another reality, she had a relationship with Acacia, and she understands him better than the others. She also knows enough about the big picture that she usually understands Acacia's agenda. Acacia is sometimes able to temporarily switch Jenny with alternate versions of herself who have different skills and abilities. Though she is not as combat worthy as the others, Jenny often finds herself in the middle of their battles, and she has proven herself to be highly resourceful in keeping herself and her team alive."

Sure, you can use Flux any way you like, Argo

The whole team looks pretty good and I'm pleased that I had a small contribution towards to it.

KnightRandom wrote:

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.

I was checking the posts and I saw this, well a piece of what Knight Random wrote, and I was interested in this. If KR is here, would you mind if I used this piece? If KR isn't, could I use it? If not, its no biggie. I thought it would fit in a little better than what I've got for my start right now. If my wording sounds strange, its because I meant to say..use it but take out the Peacekeepers and other named references and use the bones of the idea.

Hello everyone,
I have been wanting to do a drawing of the Peacemakers, and finally got around to it. It is basically my own take on Argosai'ls drawing.
Hope you'll all enjoy!



I took one small artist liberty: It was mentioned that Dr. Acacia and Jenny had a relationship in another reality, and I figured that maybe they continued in our own reality as well.

If you like to share, or see it on other platforms–
Blogspot: http://cosmicbeholder.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-peacemakers.html
tumblr: http://cosmicbeholder.tumblr.com/post/100187343389/the-peacemakers-are-a-team-of-public-domain-open
DeviantArt: http://thecosmicbeholder.deviantart.com/art/The-Peacemakers-488889847?ga_submit_new=10%253A1413496799&ga_type=edit&ga_changes=1&ga_recent=1

Cheers!

Very cool picture!

Very nice Beholder!

Thanks guys! Very glad you like it!
If the need ever arises to have some use for it, e.g. to promote the Peacemakers or Public Domain Superheroes, let me know anytime!