HeroMachine Character Portrait Creator

The Wax Man was what they called him later; Dr. Crawford Hux was who he had really been. He was not young- no, not anymore. He’d married, had a family, and then it fell apart. His wife, well. She died first, after two years of a degenerative brain disease. His daughter had no disease though: she died in a car accident.
And just like that, the sane, rational doctor found himself lying alone at night, keenly aware of his shaking, wrinkled hands. Keenly aware he was going to die. And just like that, the thought began to scare him; and then, consume him.
First he looked to science, but it failed him. He thought about cryogenics, but no one was willing to invest in it yet. One day, they said, it might be feasible. One day? He could die tomorrow!
And so began his quest for the occult, and it didn’t fail him- not exactly. It was simple, transfer your soul to a wax body, kill someone with it, and then replace their head with your own. It was, he told himself, like surgery; just surgery, to keep himself alive.
But the catch was simple; it couldn’t be any corpse. It had to be someone he killed himself, and it had to be someone who wanted to die.
And here is where he failed.
He found people dying in cancer wards, and suicidal men and women. Some of them agreed to die, and he did it; yet when he tried to carry out the rite, it simply didn’t work. And now, slowly, his wax was beginning to melt: and he was afraid. He lashed out, madly killing, desperate to find a host; but whether they accepted death or not, it never worked.
It was in a warehouse where the masked hero finally found him. There was no fight; he was melting away, little of him remaining. He told the masked man his story and asked, why? Why would it not work? It’s because, came the answer, no human truly wants to die. Not really.
As he melted away and the papers declaimed him as the Wax Man, the Wax Killer, a man in a mask walked on knowing that all the men and women who lived, had some part of the Wax Man in them.

A soldier without a country, and a man with nothing left to lose; that was the recipe for the man who would undertake a one man crusade against the USA by himself. A bitter war veteran, the man named Connor Bleake would make it his mission to assassinate key military figures, disrupt police equipment and operations, and in short wage a guerilla war against the whole country. To him, this was revenge for his friends who had died needlessly in the last war. Covering his body in pale blue war paint in the manner of the ancient gallic tribes, he would begin this war in earnest. He would be pitted against not only the country, but also the various vigilante heroes who called it home; but despite the best effort of state and masks, he would never be caught. To the media, he would become known as The Gaul.

Over the years, Vigil would update his costume with a mask made by himself. This would follow with shin guards, and better clothing; several years later he would be gifted a customized costume with a kevlar reinforced torso, made by a man who he had saved.

His status would always be debated as a hero or a dangerous vigilante, but he would be hailed as a hero by the locals of the neighborhood, stalking the alleys and rooftops of the city silently.

@JR19759Sure has been a long time, dude.

Starting off, here’s a tragic hero: Vigil.

Travis Creed was a troubled teen. Everyone could see it written plain as day in his slouched form, bruised face and unblinking eyes. With a dead mother and a father content to express his frustrations on the nearest animate being, life was not easy; made even harder in college by one Randal Brow, a thickset brute of a boy in odds to the scrawny Travis.

Travis was tired; he figured a nice drop down the college’s roof would do him in properly. This was not to be, however; he would be stopped and befriended by the college janitor, Jimmy. Tall, smiling, bright eyed, Jimmy would take Travis under his wing, teach him skills to defend himself, a remnant of his own misspent youth.

When Travis’ father died, the still too young Travis would drop college and run away from the authorities, preferring to live by himself. Ignoring Jimmy’s advices, he would use money won from streetfights to get himself a less-than-legal apartment arrangement. However in few years, the streetfighting scene was being cracked down on, and Travis was all out of rent. Coming across his still arrogant, former bully Randal, Travis made a decision; the next week he followed Randal to an alleyway, beat him up, and stole his hefty wallet.

This, however had tragic consequences; the next day Randal would walk into school with a gun, and Jimmy would be among the dead in the violence. A horrified Travis would find out over the next few days that the money he’d looted belonged to Randal’s father, just as much an abusive figure as his own had been. One beating too many and an unshakeable belief that it was someone from the college who had done it had pushed Randal over the edge.

Jimmy, always a loner, had left Travis his ramshackle house. After a week spent there in mourning, one night a pair of muggers would find themselves faced by a man in hood. They would mock and ask him what he was doing in a street so dangerous, so late at night; before he left them with cracked bones and several broken ribs, he would say only one sentence: “Holding a vigil.”

Here is an attempt at a Superman style character for my universe of heroes and Villains. Pretty pleased how this one turned out. I give to you…SuperStar!