Welcome to the twenty-first edition of... Son of Thunder!
Ah, fall. Where the leaves turn brilliant hues and the crisp, cool air is full of cider and donuts.
Where baseball is still being played in Chicago?
Well, yes.
It's still baseball season, and I'm even more excited by the game than I have been in years. Not just because the divisional races seem to be coming right down to the wire, but the Chicago Cubs have already clinched the division title and home field advantage for the National League playoffs.
For those of you who may not know, the Cubs last won a World Series in 1908, one hundred years ago. I believe that's the longest draught in the Major Leagues.
Now, Cub fans desperately want to believe... but frankly, I worry that they'll figure out a way to blow it again. Stay tuned.
I was going through some of my old binders recently - and was blown away by what veritable trasure chests they are. I found two of my old art binders, and you guys will be seeing the results as I scan in what I found. Old Four Aces and Hornet pictures by Sable, Jim McClain, Tim Watts and yours truly - but that's just the tip of the iceberg. I couldn't get them all in this time but there's a ton of the pictures throughout the Forte Universe section.
I had many, many binders, each with its own special focus. One (okay, two) filled with newspaper and magazine articles I planned to spin plots off someday (remember, this was pretty much pre-Internet). Several with game write ups (you need several for 320-odd issues!). Three with villains and one with just villain teams.
And one with heroes.
I never really created remotely as many heroes as villains. Villains, I needed four or five a week, maybe more. Heroes, not so much.
Even those I did create, I never really put as much time into most of them, as I did their villainous counterparts. My heroes were even more straightforward than the bad guys, sometimes being nothing more than a costume and a note pointing out which group he or she belonged to. Sometimes the powers were fully figured, sometimes they were just listed as to what I thought the hero could do.
Strangely, I filled out origin sheets for most of them. I mean, if I wasn't going to play them, why give them an origin and enemies and such?
I suppose - and at this point it is just that, supposition - that I didn't want any cardboard characters cluttering up my universe. There were not going to be that many heroes anyway, and those that stuck around had better have a darn good reason for being there... even if it was just to get knocked around by the villains to show how tough the bad guys were.
I recently discovered the book of heroes, and was flipping through it, mainly looking for any art references I could make use of. I found many surprises.
Such as a magnetic-powered version of Americana. Same powers, mostly, but justified through magnetics. Huh.
Not to mention the stripe across her chest originally went up around the star to form an "A". I ditched that pretty quickly, though.
Captain Thunder and Thunderbolt originally had the "thunderflash" emblem, then I tried to modernize the look a little. As you can see in the pics on this site, they've gone back to the original look.
Versions of heroine Poltergeist (Angel Flight version one) with a completely different name and origin than the one I hold as canon - but I had the canon version too.
Characters whose names or pictures would be familiar, but whose powers or abilities were just plain odd.
Even familiar characters had twists - Maelstrom's original character sheet has the name "Windstorm" crossed out, replaced with "Maelstrom"! Otherwise she's the same character. (I soon made Windstorm the character's mother.) Ghost Girl and Steelhawk are the same, but Golden Man's got this "the man with a heart of gold!" written under his character name - he was originally a far different character. But evidently one night I needed some heroes to be in Portland and that's the origin of the Four Aces.
Actually, I'm just now writing Four Aces: Origins. Trust me, it'll be good.
Anyway, it was fun to page through my character binder and discover how heroes were tweaked and polished before they got to Forte -and how many of them never were changed at all.
Oh, didn't I mention? I had run a lot of games before Forte, including a couple that lasted the better part of a year. It looks like I pretty much kept the NPC heroes and tweaked them, rather than throw out any ideas. Sure, they'd go away and maybe appear only once - or never! - but it was fun to look through the old memory book again.
This is what I've cooked up for this edition of the Clobberin' Times:
Pictures: Eric Gravel's take on each member of The Enforcers! New pics of Justice Squadron members! Tons of pictures of Hornet and Summer Silversmith too. All located in the Forte Universe section!
Seven new pictures of Americana, too, in Americana's Art Gallery #21.
As for stories...
The Justice Squadron returns with an all-new story centering on Hornet and Black Cougar. Wait a minute, they don't exactly like each other, do they? Don't miss Training Ground.
Things are about to get hairy. It's a holiday unlike any other when Americana encounters The Group Laroux!
And if you're kind of wondering how Astrea spends her holiday, read Merry Christmas, Americana!
And I've added an introduction to each of the groups in the Forte Universe. There is a small hint of what's coming next for Portland's favorite heroes in the Four Aces section.
Hope everyone has a wonderful autumn!
K.C.