Young Justice isn't half bad

I hate to admit it, but the new DC cartoon series, Young Justice, could be a lot worse. Airing on Cartoon Network one would think to encounter a lot of horrible changes, but Sports Master is still a prick and Black Canary is still spunky and dark. The character called Artemis is a thinly veiled cover of Arrowette (whether mother or daughter is unclear though I must lean toward the latter) and they have yet to reveal which Robin it is (making an actual plot point of denying revelation of the boy behind the glasses) and while Super Boy is chalked full of angst and Kid Flash is the biggest horndog of the last decade, the series overall is solid. I can honestly say I wanna see where this goes.

Movie Rage

My indiscriminate rage at all of the upcoming "comic book movies" is growing cold. I find my cynicism growing more powerful by the day. Between Ann Hathaway revamping Cat Woman to Spider-Man (is this technically #4 or #0 or #1v2?) coming back from the manure grave, there is a glimmer of hope. But I draw the line at another Hulk movie, that and a movie version of Marvel's Civil War. Seriously, Hollywood, you could well end up a victim of your own creation if enough shut-in's watch Revenge of the Nerds...

The Omniscient

General: A technopathic youth of roughly 26 who has, over years of luck and hard work along with the occasional quid pro quo assassination, established a network of satellites, relay stations, informants, and hacked computers around the world that allow him to monitor all public broadcasts, all communications on land-lines, cell phones, the internet, and to access the contents of any electronic device that has an outside network of any kind. Living in the Silicon Valley area of California he works as a low-profile computer programmer, making the majority of his money through stock trading and funneling a few dollars out of most of the wealthy bank accounts around the world, the young man known as Lucas Wentworth blends into crowds like a chameleon to a tree. Lucas is often known to don a hoodie and jeans and take a stroll around town, listening to his giant headphones and seeing the world through modified versions of the Diving Goggles that resemble simple wrap-around sunglasses, but when the issue of super villainy comes to a head he’s quick to let the “Blind, cape-wearing, crazy-looking, hard-punching, fast-running idiots of Heroes” rush into battle while he stands back and checks stats, casting the occasional bet on the fights outcome. Lucas isn’t much of the hero type; he’s more of a profiteer with morals. Disliking seeing innocents harmed, Lucas has no qualms with disabling anyone that tries to, say; topple a building for any reason.

Physical Features: Standing at 5'6" and a near-emaciated 115lbs the young Lucas has pasty white skin, though no blemishes, and slicked back blond hair. His eyes, afflicted by partial Heterochromia, are icy blue with golden corona around the pupils. Lacking all but the most basic of muscle mass, Lucas is almost incapable of physical combat, but his psychokinetic talents for manipulating the electronic world around have given him other defensive and offensive options:

Defensive Capability: A special electromagnetic tattoo on the back of his neck, drawn to look like a kite shield with swords crossed behind it, can be activated at will to encase his body in a 1in thick repulsive shield that's designed to shock organic life, deplete projectiles of their momentum, and disable electronics.

Offensive Capability: For when standing in a near-invincible mobile force field isn’t the best option, the tattoo can focus its capabilities to form an E.M.P. capable of knocking out a New York block, but it cannot shield while attacking and vice versa. This attack, obviously, wouldn't work very well against a low-tech enemy, but the Omniscient does very little actual fighting, so the lack of combat-ready technique and gadgets suits him fine.

Crime Fighting Style: Using his Network, The Omniscient tends to be at the right place at the right time for whatever purpose he needs to accomplish, and he rarely ends up resorting to physical fighting. When he just needs to look up, oh say, Russian ICBM launch codes a normal PC will work just fine, but for operations requiring more finesse he has devised special armor for direct interface with the ethereal networks and webs that contain all the data of humanity.

Armor: Designed to amplify his technopathic abilities, The Omniscient’s armor is known as his Diving Suit because of its bronze coloring, the running of cables and pipes over the metal sheeting, and the large steam punk goggles that make it powerful. When Lucas dons the suit it makes him so powerful he could make every phone in America stand up and say hello, so generally he uses the goggles and a pair of DJ headphones that are wired into a tiny, MP3-like device, that’s linked into the subliminal, secretive, and near-legendary Network that makes the Omniscient as all-knowing as he is.

Weapons: The Omniscient does very little fighting, but he’s got the weapons to stock an army. All of his weapons are hi-tech and futuristic in design and function.
Hyper-Sonic Rifle: A sniper rifle capable of firing a bullet at Mach V speeds, which is 5x the speed of sound. This weapon is modifiable with a large number of barrel types, ammunitions, scopes, and can even be changed into other kinds of firearms, notably an SMG and an automatic pistol.
Nerve Disruptor: A small patch that, when attached to any unarmored skin on organic life, disrupts all synaptic messages from brain to body, leaving the target conscious but paralyzed.
Diving Suit: The suit that allows Wentworth to amplify his powers also has a light-warping magnetic field for stealth, can withstand the actual pressure of being a mile underwater, and is flight-capable with anti-gravity boosters. The giant bathospheric helmet is optional.
M.I.A. “Mini Intelligence Agent”: Small, hyper-modified Secret Agent Barbie’s that Wentworth gave artificial intellect to, as well as fully articulated robotic skeletal systems, and a utility belt full of gadgets-in-miniature; a taser, a self-winching grappling hook, and they can basically stick their hand into a port and download the entire computer onto The Network.

Powers: Technopaths can empower themselves, or be empowered by others, in any of a million ways, from giant robot attacks to being given neural implants, but one of the rarest ways is how Wentworth became what he is, through being born. Lucas can basically control anything electrical, his power growing stronger the more complex the device is, i.e. a cell phone might give him a 2/10 but a high school computer lab’s gonna register more like a 6/10. His interface is subconscious, but he has to choose to make it, meaning that Wentworth can’t sift through the information at will; it comes to him like a memory. The Diving Suit allows him to push the information forward in his mind, view it like a floating LCD and choose what he wants to read. Data Collection and Device Control are almost two separate powers, according to Lucas, Collection is an interface with the source, a symbiotic relationship, but Control is a dictatorship, “Mono supremus Machina” Man above Machine. Interface is a mental relationship, but physical contact makes it exponentially stronger, the electromagnetic field of the apparatus interfacing with the nerves and synapses of Lucas’ body making the bond easier to foster.

Past: Simple upbringings are often the soil, from which the greatest trees grow, and Lucas Wentworth is a three thousand year old redwood. Nobody expects two middle class white people from Eureka to birth a pseudo-hero, but Clem and Bethany Wentworth did just that. A simple upbringing in northern CA, his family living off the meager paycheck his fireman father garnered and the tips from his mother’s diner waitress job. Lucas learned of his powers at the ever-so-innocent age of eight when he, being a loner from birth, wished his Speak & Spell could have real conversations with him. Within the hour the two were discussing Apple Juice vs. Grape Juice, Lincoln-Douglass style. Wentworth told his parents what he could do and they believed him only after making his Game Boy shoot lasers out of its pixilated screen. They encouraged him to hide his powers, and he did…for about two years. When his father hit a jackpot in the California State Lottery the family stayed in Eureka, but the small town was too abuzz with people seeking the $2,000,000 the family now had.

They ended up in Sacramento, much to Lucas’ delight; this meant he now had more freedom, fewer people to call him a freak, and above all the ability to sneak in a touch of techno-trickery here and there. Learning early and fast that life in the big city is nothing like living in a small town, he was mugged his second day in Sacramento and suffered a broken arm. Lucas then began his rigorous study of the spy game, watching all the Bond movies, reading everything from the Maltese Falcon to the declassified CIA manuals at the library. Starting small, the youngest Wentworth began collecting intelligence on classmates and teachers, trading candy for tips and listening closely to rumors Lucas soon had a catalogue on his peers thick enough to bribe, blackmail, threaten, make, or break any student or teacher at his middle school.

Then he went to high school. His network now harder to maintain, he had to work hard at it until he realized that the school had a computer lab, then it all got very easy. The government influence in the city was demanding electronic record keeping on everything from library books to schools grading system, and Lucas knew it. He was in the computer lab every day, working on honing his powers by hacking into school systems and taking careful notes on the other students. His omnipresent knowledge pushed the other students away, cooled the faculty’s shoulders to him, and left him back in his outcast role. Lucas knew he could never be the social one, never have the cheerleader girlfriend or be the star quarterback, but what he could do was know things, control things, use his power to be above the world. Technopaths are normal people, they want normal things, and react in normal ways when they are denied those things, Lucas just wanted friends and when he couldn’t have them he decided he wanted power, and that he wouldn’t be denied. Money, power, and most importantly, knowledge were all his by his junior year, but not a friend to speak of. He graduated, walking alone, as the class valedictorian, and nobody knew that the principal had embezzled almost $10,000 from the schools art program.

Lucas got his job in Silicon Valley programming computers, without any college degrees of any sort, and was living happily, making his normal pay as well as repairing electronics out of his house, and amazing everyone when he could fix anything with circuits no matter the condition. He saw a news report on a villain holding the whole state hostage with an earthquake machine over the San Andreas Fault line and decided that he needed to do something. At the young age of 20 he started his career by using his techno-telepathy to search the internet for every mention of Harbinger, a small-time bad guy with a dramatic flair, and find mention he did. That’s story for another day, suffice to say that was the day that The Omniscient was born inside of Lucas Wentworth. From then on he devoted himself to the gathering of information for the greatest good, himself. He developed quid pro quo relationships with people in the inelegance communities in every major country around the world through electronic means, as well as an occasional international outing for a face-to-face with a spy or foreign minister.

By age 24 Wentworth was wealthy, connected, and still humble in his quest to know everything. He had his arsenal of weapons well developed, his powers getting stronger every single day, his mind expanding by leaps and bounds, his web of informants growing constantly, and his influence in the world around him still going unnoticed by many. Then Harbinger returned. Wentworth, through series upon series of events, was forced to actually fight him, and ended up tapping into a power most people will never understand, he took control of Harbinger’s neural network and linked their minds, forever creating an archenemy that he understood as well as he understood himself. This scared Lucas into hiding for months until one of his few true friends, a teacher named Susan DuPre, was killed in a massive explosion at her school, which only 12 people out of 800 survived. This jolted Wentworth with the knowledge that life is too short to mope around and be afraid all the time, and it pushed him to anonymously donate huge sums of money, not all of it his, to various charities, as well as start to do things for a greater good, but only small things.

Now, at 26 years old, Lucas Wentworth is still a technopathic genius, he still doesn’t fit in, and he still dislikes most people, but he is still rich and generous, he still keeps his humble job, and when the need is great and the options few, he is still The Omniscient.

New posts!

The come this night! I gave up on my attempt to write an article on Dr.Fate, for three reasons; I couldn't feign that much interest, that's got to be one of the most convoluted histories I've ever read, and I really really really dislike the idea of any comic that presents me with three separate alternate endings. But I have retribution in the form of self-gratifying delusions of grandeur! I will, this night, post two profiles-in-progress of characters I'm attempting to work out. I am, by no means, a comic book artist, but I often fancy myself a writer, so I have characters. I welcome all comments and criticisms, I can only get better for it.

Reasons and Excuses

I'll soon be posting several things, i know it's been a bit of a wait but being a senior entails lots of actually doing homework so i graduate. Ill be posting a few bio's for character's I've made myself as well as reviews for established comic characters i have no right to judge in any way. Patience is a virtue, and impatience is deadly.

Jubilation Lee: X-Woman of the Year

M-Day. In and of itself this arc could constitute an article for this blog, but it is only a supporting role, an explanatory piece of the puzzle as to why one of my favorite characters of the X-Men titles, my second favorite of the mutants, has lost her power. I speak, of course, of Jubilation Lee; once known as her X-Man moniker “Jubilee” but now resigned to being the New Warrior known as “Wondra” she seems to have fallen far from her power of infinite possibility, as Emma frost called it, to a simpler role as super tutor in heroism.

Once a mutant with the power to expel tiny firework-like puffs of light she called “pafs” and cause an explosion inside them at a molecular level she soon learned to cause these explosions in almost anything, once even combusting the clothing of a guard to make an escape, she is now resigned to more cliché powers; superhuman strength, limited invulnerability, and flight-assisting disks. Jubilee once had the unlimited potential to be one of the most powerful mutants ever, exploding the atoms of anything leave possibilities without end, but the Scarlet Witch saw to it that she had her future ripped from her hands and thrown into limbo.

M-Day robbed all mutants of their astounding powers, altering their very genes, but it also took away their identity, their sense of community. They had, for so long, been united by their need to survive the onslaught that the Homo sapiens had begun upon the Homo Magnus, but with the loss of their powers they could actually blend into society. No longer was it a two-sided war, the harsh no man’s land had been cleared of some of its barbed wire, a few mortars stilled their shells on each side, and the trenches no longer seemed so deep, so some of the mutants naturally formed a gradient into the norm, leaving the home front open to attack.

Jubilation, having grown up a rich Asian-American girl, had her parents torn from her by the assassins called Reno and Molokai, and was forced to live by whit and will in a shopping mall in Hollywood. She has a naturally acuity for gymnastics, which aided her in stealing food to survive, and she’s got good hand-to-hand skills, which Wolverine later honed even further, and is both street- and book-wise.

If haunting the temporary Outback base of the X-Men was Jubilee's way onto the team, her linchpin was saving Wolverine from the torturous Reavers. She cut him down and nursed him back to health, earning her the right to fight with the best of the best on the good guy's side. Going through stents with almost every X-Team Jubilee is truly a mutant of all trades, and a respectable fighter in pretty much every way. Whether she’s standing in a yellow trench coat and denim shorts or the Wondra get-up, whether she’s causing molecular explosions or bench pressing a freight train, Miss Jubilation Lee gets my vote for X-Woman of the year.

But seriously, Marvel; powers, she deserves ‘em. So make with the creative solution, some science experiment, hell, let her make out with Quicksilver and his healing touch for all I care, just the Jubilee Paffing again.

John Constantine: Blue Collar Warlock

Who has so completely captured the minds and souls, often literally, of comic book readers and occultist devotees than British Warlock John Constantine? Nobody; that’s who. From his early days as a magical consultant to the Swamp Thing in his ever turbulent saga, to the days of Mucus Membrane, to the battle against The First of the Fallen, John Constantine has done what needed doing with an arrogant smile on his face and a heartfelt “fuck you, wanker.” on his lips. Constantine believes, very harshly, that everyone will eventually falter, that Hell claims at least a few fleeting moments in every life.

Hounded by the Holy and Unholy alike, his whole life, even before he was born, and he shall be until someone claims his soul, Constantine has been wheeling and dealing, often backpedaling and double dealing, with the biggest and baddest of mythology, religion, and every sin on earth, since he cursed his father to waste away and ran from home. Drawn into a pocket universe where the Super Heroes of the world seem to have simply faded into nothingness, Constantine was conceived of "really good ideas... about serial killers, the Winchester House, and... want[ing] to draw Sting in a story." says creator Allan Moore.

Having strangled his twin brother with his umbilical cord while they were still in-utero, Constantine literally started out life with a bang and a body at his feet. His mother, Marry Anne, died while giving birth, which left Constantine guilt-ridden his whole life long, and his father blamed him for the loss until John cursed him to waste into nothingness. John and his older sister, Cheryl, had to move from their fathers Liverpool home to their aunt and uncles home in Northampton because their father was arrested, in a drunken stupor, for stealing a neighboring woman’s underwear. With a childhood so riddled with cloak and dagger family matters, so chock full of bad parenting, is it any wonder one of his earliest acts of magic was to round up all of his childhood innocence and vulnerability and pack it into a box just to be rid of it?

John has dealt with the power players of England, America, Heaven, Hell, and every other place rational human’s fear; he’s fought Angels, Demons, Gangsters, and the occasional over-zealous groupie. I say Hellblazer is not only a great comic, but something akin to a warning, a foretelling of things that may yet come, and I beg you all to heed it and read it.