Random Panel: Bad weather

It … it’s raining MONSTERS!

Female brick expansion released!

I am happy to announce that the sixth and final body template for HeroMachine 2.5 has now been upgraded with the Expansion Pack! You can now use the Expansion items on any template, for that perfect character portrait.

I will be spending the remainder of the week squashing bugs, so if you have any reports not in the general Bug post, please let me know asap. Next week I hope to have the final, full 2.5 version ready and available for download, with all of the fixes in place.

Mashup 7: That's one ugly baby

Welcome to another edition of the Random Monday Mashup, my weekly effort to make an entertaining story out of one (and only one) panel from each of ten randomly selected comic books. This week we encounter two terrible parents, an invasion by alien crocodiles, and an orphanage doubling as a lab for experimenting on humans. And awaaaaaay we go!

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Random Panel: Demands fated to go unmet

Get me undressed!

Random Panel: Revert in the name of de-evolution!

He’s turning everyone into monkeys!

Random Panel: Get this kumquat outta here

Get this kumquat outta here!

Caption Contest 5 Prize — Creature:Blackout

Cameron and I have finished work on his prize for winning Caption Contest 5, the dual-aspect character Creature:Blackout. Here’s Cameron’s description:

The characters name is “Creature: Blackout”, and he’s a super-powered mercenary in the world of Aberrant. Costume wise, he wears a featureless white lycra bodysuit that also coveres his face, removing all facial featurs but his eyes (egg-face is also an appropriate name). When he uses his powers, six shadowy, black tentacles manifest from his back, and his whole image changes from a featureless humanoid to a horrific creature whose image is so terrifying as to be capable of driving people permenantly mad (especially his face). His other main power is the ability to generate a large inky blacknesss that can envelope large areas and induce a state of sensory deprivation in which only his horrific imaghe is visible, allowing him to ensnare and affect large numbers of people and this has also lead to his name.

I’d like an image of his leaping towards the viewer in his horrific visage (I always visualised it as a kind of flayed-human kind of image) with tentacles writhing.

And here’s what we came up with for the illustration:

Blackout

If you want to win your very own custom black and white illustration of whatever you like (within reason), you can enter Caption Contest 6:Hicks and Chicks, going on now! But you’d better bring your A game, because the entries there already are pretty stellar.

My name is CHUK!

Now here’s a neat science fact — if you kick a man (like camo-clad terrorist Chuk here) in the junk, said junk will shout his name:

The jig is up, Creeps!

I tried this myself, learning that my name is actually pronounced “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!” and should be said in a very, very high voice.

Random Panel: Nice knockers

Nice knockers for a NAZI

Devil's Cape Review

I should note before starting this review that Rob Rogers, the author of “Devil’s Cape” (the recent release from Wizards of the Coast’s Discovery line), is a friend of mine. Plus, he used my last name for one of the companies briefly mentioned in the background, which clearly is the mark of a genius. Or perhaps just someone who knows that Hebert is one of the most common surnames in the book’s setting of Louisiana, take your pick.

Now that I’m fully disclosed (in violation of several restraining orders, let me add), here’s your short-version review:

This book is awesome.

And I don’t mean in the “Guy Gardner was an awesome Green Lantern” kind of not-really-that-awesome, but “Batman kicking the crap out of Superman in Dark Knight Returns” awesome. In other words, it’s really, really good. What I do with HeroMachine is to help bring super-heroes to life visually. Rob Rogers does the same thing with “Devil’s Cape” using nothing but words, and yet his characters pulse just as vividly in my mind as anything I’ve ever drawn. This is a hugely satisfying, truly mature, profoundly good book, which just happens to revolve around the lives of super-powered individuals. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Read on for a much more complete (and much longer) bout of gushing.

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