Character Contest 24: Super enemies

After a two week break for the holidays, it's time once again for a character design contest!

Only this time, your challenge is to develop a bad guy! Come up with the best enemy for an established character, explaining who the person is and how they're related to the main character, and you'll win either a portrait or any item you like to be included in HeroMachine 3.

As an example, you might come up with a new Bulletman villain named "Kevlar" (he stops bullets!). Or a Spider-Man villain named "The Boot" (see, he squishes spiders).

You get the idea. The villain you come up with should be tied to a published super-hero in some way.

To recap, the rules are:

  • All entries must be posted as a comment to this post, including a link to an image of the character on a publicly accessible web site (something like PhotoBucket or ImageShack or the UGO Forums) along with a name and explanation of who his arch rival is;
  • As many entries as you want, but they can't have been entered into an HM contest before;
  • No image editing in PhotoShop-like applications except for basic cropping.

All submissions are due by next Monday night at midnight, with results posted on Tuesday.

Good luck everyone!

Random Panel: Must’ve been a bullet-train

bulletman-train

Poll Position: A new beginning

"Retconning" is a popular past-time in modern comics, wherein something about an established character's history is changed on purpose for some reason or another. In extreme cases, retcons can turn into full-fledged reboots, as John Byrne famously did in the Eighties with "Superman".

Which is what brings us all here today.

{democracy:114}

Discussion after the jump.

Continue reading

Random Panel: On reasons, excellent

bulletman-sissy

Caption Contest 51 Prize: Black Ant

After many many months, I have finally finished Danny Beaty's prize for winning Caption Contest 51, a custom black and white illustration of his character "Black Ant":

Here's the original HeroMachine version, just for a point of reference:

new-the-black-ant

As you can see, I changed up his armor and blasters quite a bit, and his helmet a lot, so we could get exactly what he was supposed to look like.

I also want to thank Danny publicly for being so patient while work on HM3 delayed the completion of his prize. Thanks Danny!

I am going to try my best to finish all of the outstanding contest prizes before New Year's. I doubt I can actually do it, but I'm going to try, darn it!

Random Panel: Great moments in bullet-romance

bulletman-chloroform

(From the "Bulletman" mini-comic, 1940-something.)

Random Panel: Unsavory moments in Fantastic Four history …

agc-8-1943-ff

(From "America's Greatest Comics" number 8, 1943. Even back then, they knew something was amiss in the Storm family.)

Goofing off time!

Hammerknight was kind enough to put together a nifty crossword puzzle to help you pass the time this holiday when family time crosses over from warm and endearing to homicide-inducing and you need to just get away for a few minutes. Print it for handy use later while pretending to gaze admiringly at the "Twisted Sister" sweat shirt your grandmother just gave you because she's so hip!

Here's your answer key, in unreadable small size so we don't spoil the challenge (click it for the viewable size):

who-am-i-marvel-key

Merry Christmas to all of you celebrating it today! And special holiday thanks to Hammerknight for taking the time to put this together for our collective amusement.

Random Panel: Batman always gives SOCKs for Christmas …

batman_christmas

(And a very Merry Christmas to all my Christmas-celebrating readers!)

Bringing it to a head

Many thanks to Hammerknight for another excellent recipe for building your own custom helmets in HeroMachine 3. Great work as always, HK! Click on an image to see it in a larger, more legible size.