Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest

[King crimson]

Hi, this is a super rambly piece of writing but I hope you all enjoy it. If you have any questions feel free to ask them.

On Superman's Archenemy and How it Plays into the Quest
So I don't often get to talk about these things all that often but the history of comic book characters is actually really interesting in my opinion. I won't be delving too deep into things but suffice to say I do think this is something worth looking into and it has affected some things with the quest and there's some really neat stuff it ties into with comics at large. Without further ado I'll get to talking.

The Reign of the Superman and the Ultra-Humanite
Before talking about Superman as we know him I'd like to discuss Superman as originally envisioned by Siegel and Shuster. The original story, titled "The Reign of the Superman" is a sci-fi story about a homeless bald man being given a drug by a mad scientist that made him super smart and gave him superpowers. He then used these new skills to commit evil acts until the drug wore off and he went back to normal. Naturally a lot about Superman was retooled and redone but certain elements of the initial "Superman prototype" actually went into his archenemies as both Ultra-Humanite and Lex Luthor fit the bill for this descriptor.

Indeed both Ultra-Humanite and later Lex Luthor would take on aspects of this initial character although they did eventually end up splitting a lot of his qualities. Ultra-Humanite was the first real supervillain Superman ever encountered and thus arguably the first true "supervillain" in comics. In the character's debut their entire name was unknown but they were a bald, physically weak, extraordinarily intelligent person who used their intellect to commit crimes and dominate others. Eventually Ultra-Humanite began to take on the more psychic aspects of the prototype, engaging in body swapping and mind switching. Eventually the writers of the time killed off Ultra-Humanite leaving room for a different character to become Superman's archnemesis.

I do think it's interesting that Ultra-Humanite, who was arguably Superman's first archenemy, has since faded into the background as a character especially considering the fact that the character has a lot of the DNA of the original "superman" character from Siegel and Shuster's first draft. I think part of the reason why Ultra-Humanite faded out of popularity was because the character took on more and more of the psychic nature of the original draft which coupled with the fact that a man who became a woman probably was something people thought highly transgressive in the 40's lead to the characters decline. Decades later the character was somewhat redefined as a genius mind in a gorilla's body and we got to our current incarnation of the character. A lot of the traits remain consistent across adaptations but people haven't known what to do with the character since other entities have since filled the niche Ultra-Humanite once held.

It's not really relevant to the overall narrative of the evolution of Ultra-Humanite but I do think it's interesting that the one time we are given a name as to who the Ultra-Humanite is in the comics the character is given the name Gerard Shugel. Shugel is pretty clearly a portmanteau of Shuster and Siegel, the last names of the original creators of Superman. I do think it's neat that Ultra-Humanite is very much their original draft for The Reign of the Superman just reinterpreted as the antagonist being opposed by Superman as opposed to the titular Superman.

So what does this have to do with the quest? Well firstly I tried to give the character respect and kind of make them an interesting and iconic part of the landscape as opposed to letting them just fade into obscurity. I wanted to make Ultra-Humanite interesting and at least somewhat iconic and so Ultra-Humanite was somewhat reinterpreted and I tried to take all the best parts of the character to create someone that could be considered Superman's archenemy at some point at least. I think I've succeeded with this and so Ultra-Humanite successfully became Superman's archenemy in-quest for at least a little bit (Ultra-Humanite currently holds the title as of the time this is being written). That being said I knew that due to the way the quest is built Ultra-Humanite would not successfully remain Superman's archenemy and so I tried to characterize them in such a way where they could be a foil to both Superman and Lex Luthor. Ultra-Humanite very deliberately contrasts Lex as an archenemy so that in a sort of meta-sense in-quest there will likely be a sort of thematic beat of why one managed to become the archnemesis while the other simply became another member of the rogues gallery, if one with a bit more history.

The Quest's Main Character
So Lex debuted shortly after Ultra-Humanite and at first was just another mad scientist enemy in the same vein as Ultra-Humanite. Originally he had hair. However due to a mistake by an artist Lex eventually began to be depicted as a bald man. He was initially just another mad scientist but because the writer's liked using him a lot he grew in prominence until he slowly became the mad scientist character and became Superman's archenemy as they tied him to Superman's past and gave the two an emotional and ideological conflict that would later be vastly expanded on as time kept moving forward. I do think that the fact they could give him a Russian name (at one point he was "Alexei Luthor") further helped push him as a character coupled with his early use of atomic bombs made him a wonderful character for use in stories inspired by the cold war.

At around the time the Superfriends started Lex Luthor had been pretty much cemented as the main villain Superman fought as he was the "leader" of the Legion of Doom to parallel Superman and the Justice League. Granted his close association with another teammate (Brainiac) whom he teamed up with multiple times in the comics also caused Brainiac to rise in popularity although Lex Luthor still stayed on top. The first Donner movie somewhat cemented him as Superman's archenemy in the public consciousness even if Superman 2, promptly knocked him out of being the definitive antagonist for Superman. He did retain his standing due to the amount of history he had behind him so even as Zod, Brainiac, Doomsday and Darkseid all grew in prominence as potential archenemies of Superman, Lex was always able to make his way back on top due to having that established personal connection and history behind him.

An interesting thing to note about the first Donner movie is that while Lex Luthor is something of a mad scientist in it, he is also a real estate broker. This coupled with his redesign into a business man (he was actually supposedly based off of Donald Trump and Ted Turner at one point) managed to keep him relevant and give him his own unique niche at the time that other villains didn't have until he carved out his place as the definitive corporate supervillain in DC comics. Over the years more and more of his mad scientist persona has come back into comics as time goes on (first his build then his purple and green battlesuit and then his status as the leader of the Legion of Doom) even as he's cemented himself as the Superman villain.

You can probably tell from my own approach to the character that I draw most heavily on the Luthor of the 90's and early 2000's. Partly because that is where the DCAU debuted which is something I like a lot and heavily influences this quest but also because I think it neatly gives Lex a unique niche that not a lot of other villains can match while also not falling into the problems a lot of more modern comics have with Lex which is that they neglect LexCorp in favor of the mad scientist. I personally think that having Superman's archnemesis be a normal human being who shares a good deal of qualities of the original prototype Superman on top of having really strong thematic parallels is the best choice and the best way to make the most interesting stories. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think Lex Luthor works as a Superman villain not because he is incredibly intelligent or can fight him evenly but rather because Lex can attack Superman socially and because in many ways he has what Superman wants while at the same time wanting what Superman has. I won't get too into it but suffice to say I do think Lex Luthor is Superman's archenemy and will stay that way.

In-quest all of this has manifested as mechanics that basically encourage you to enter conflict with Superman so that you're in a sense fated to be his archenemy some day.

Kneel Before the Newcomer
General Zod is a really interesting villain who rose to prominence from being a minor villain due to the Superman 2 movie which while not wholly original, drew heavily from its own thing. Terrence Stamp was iconic in that movie and the popularity of the character caused him to become an arguable contender for Superman's archenemy especially since comic writers regularly tried to put him into that position. There has been precedent for evil dopplegangers displacing previous archenemies as the new archenemy of the character (Zoom replaced Captain Cold pretty definitively for example) and with the constant attempts by DC to push the character he got some weight behind him. General Zod grew so popular that DC even introduced a not!Russian version of the character who in quest has been called Avruskin. Due to Lex Luthor not being available to constantly directly antagonize Superman Avruskin had a good few solid years to be Superman's archenemy. Of course the Public Enemies event happened and Lex pretty much blew him out of the water in terms of personal Superman enemy despite General Zod doing such things as giving Superman cancer and then forcing him to fight it (Kancer was weird).

General Zod made a brief resurgence before Man of Steel came out but then people realized Man of Steel wasn't a movie that would do anything for the character and was instead a glorified video game cutscene masquerading as a movie and General Zod faded into the background more or less.

Now I actually got into comics from the era when Avruskin was still kind of a big deal (They weren't new at the time but they were still formative to how I experienced things) and so I have a lot of fondness for that version of General Zod. I've also generally liked Zod's dynamic with Jor-El and how he can add a lot to the background of Krypton and its destruction. As such I made Avruskin kind of his own thing and while I did somewhat decouple him from Superman I do think he now works better given he has flexibility to go after many different things even if he is likely to still fight Superman in the end. On top of that General Zod has been made into a lot more of a mover and shaker in Krypton before it exploding and he's got a whole lot more ties to the culture and Superman's past.

Brainiac Attacks
Brainiac is a weird character because he's been around for a while but for decades he didn't have a backstory that could be pinned down. He has been an alien, a computer, an alien computer, an alien turned into a robot, a robot that made a biological version of itself, a psychic circus performer possessed by an alien computer from outer space and a bit more on top of that (and then DC decided to declare that he was all of the above only to make things more confusing). He was always a big name threat but he often overlapped with Metallo and/or Lex and so he stayed less prominent. I personally believe that only after the DCAU tied Brainiac back to Krypton did he really become a big name Superman villain and so more properties used him and he began to rise in notoriety. In the New 52 I believe he even was the first major Superman villain readers saw in the reboot.

All of this gave him some claim to being Superman's archenemy but his own convoluted backstory and the fact that most DC writers are apparently never happy with the character and are constantly rewriting and retconning him have kind of crippled the character. As such I don't think he can qualify as Superman's archenemy across all mediums but I've taken the elements I feel were the strongest in Brainiac's portrayals and created my own version who while retaining many of the backstory elements of the DCAU has his own unique twists and ties to the mythos of other major characters.

The Remaining Two
I feel like it's getting rather long and rambly so I figured I'd try and wrap up this massive retrospective on Superman's archenemies. Doomsday held the title for a little bit due to having been the only character to have killed Superman but then his biggest feat was undone and he was never able to match it and while there have been good Doomsday stories since (there's a great Flowers for Algernon-esque one if I remember correctly) but for the most part writers weren't able to use him well and so he peaked. As such while I do think he's an important legacy character I do think Doomsday should be used sparingly and that when he does show up his arrival ought to have impact so that he doesn't peak quite like he did in the comics.

The last arguable archenemy is Darkseid. I personally think this is the weakest and least interesting one as its primarily formed because DC really likes to use Darkseid as their event villain and when they have a big event it's going to involve the Justice League and thus Superman is going to play a big part in it due to being a flagship character and with a big event they can have him cut loose. As such Superman and Darkseid interact and fight 1 on 1 a lot to the point where they've kind of developed a pseudo-archenemy relation. I ultimately think that this does somewhat diminish Darkseid as well as draws away from some of Superman's aspects that I like a lot which is that for all his incredible powers he's at least somewhat still down to earth and ultimately deals with somewhat human problems and insecurities.

Conclusion
So what has this whole discussion lead up to? Well hopefully I think its demonstrated some interesting evolution in comics and how this has affected certain things in quest and how its influenced me to take certain thematic bents with some characters. I don't think this is critical to anything but I think it's neat and I hope you all enjoyed this and found it at least somewhat informative.

 

[King crimson]

Some thoughts on Character Heights
So I thought this would be a neat thing to include. It's not the most relevant and I wouldn't treat it as an ironclad rule but I thought it would be neat for me to list the general heights of characters in DC and then in turn talk about how that translates to in-quest stuff. I won't be listing children's height as that's variable but I do think it's a neat thing to list and see.

• Chemo: 25 ft
• Kilowog: 8 ft, 3 in
• Doomsday: 7 ft, 6 in
• Killer Croc: 7 ft, 5 in
• Solomon Grundy: 7 ft, 5 in
• Man-Bat: 7 ft, 4 in
• King Shark: 7 ft, 2 in
• Big Barda: 7 ft
• Arkillo: 6 ft, 10 in
• Bane: 6 ft, 8 in
• Sinestro: 6 ft, 7 in
• Steel: 6 ft, 7 in
• Martian Manhunter (default): 6 ft, 7 in
• Parasite: 6 ft, 6 in
• Gorilla Grodd: 6 ft, 6 in
• Giganta (base form): 6 ft, 6 in
• Tobias Whale: 6 ft, 5 in
• Ra's al Ghul: 6 ft, 5 in
• The Joker: 6 ft, 5 in
• Metallo (basic robot body): 6 ft, 5 in
• Deathstroke: 6 ft, 4 in
• Captain Atom: 6 ft, 4 in
• Lobo: 6 ft, 4 in
• Etrigan: 6 ft, 4 in
• Dark Opal: 6 ft, 4 in
• Monsieur Mallah: 6 ft, 3 in
• Superman: 6 ft, 3 in
• General Zod: 6 ft, 3 in
• Carmine Falcone: 6 ft, 3 in
• Avruskin: 6 ft, 3 in
• Andrew Bennett: 6 ft, 3 in
• Phantom Stranger: 6 ft, 2 in
• Maxima: 6 ft, 2 in
• Leonard Snart: 6 ft, 2 in
• Lawrence Crock: 6 ft, 2 in
• Hal Jordan: 6 ft, 2 in
• David Cain: 6 ft, 2 in
• Bruno Manneheim: 6 ft, 2 in
• Batman: 6 ft, 2 in
• Black Manta: 6 ft, 2 in
• Lex Luthor: 6 ft, 2 in
• Steve Trevor: 6 ft, 1 in
• Red Tornado (default body): 6 ft, 1 in
• Aquaman: 6 ft, 1 in
• John Stewart: 6 ft, 1 in
• Black Lightning: 6 ft, 1 in
• Deadshot: 6 ft, 1 in
• Edward Nygma: 6 ft 1 in
• Hawkman: 6 ft, 1 in
• Abin Sur: 6 ft, 1 in
• Diana Prince: 6 ft
• The Flash: 6 ft
• Victor Fries: 6 ft
• Black Adam: 6 ft
• Samuel Lane: 6 ft
• Mercy Graves: 6 ft
• Knockout: 6 ft
• Scarecrow: 6 ft
• John Constantine: 6 ft
• Harvey Dent: 6 ft
• Guy Gardner: 6 ft
• Emil Hamilton: 6 ft
• Alfred Pennyworth: 6 ft
• Whisper A'Daire: 5 ft, 11 in
• Wesley Dodds: 5 ft, 11 in
• Count Vertigo: 5 ft, 11 in
• Ted Kord: 5 ft, 11 in
• Santa Claus: 5 ft, 11 in
• Ocean Master: 5 ft, 11 in
• Mick Rory: 5 ft, 11 in
• Kyle Rayner: 5 ft, 11 in
• Katherine Kane: 5 ft, 11 in
• Jonah Hex: 5 ft, 11 in
• Gentleman Ghost: 5 ft, 11 in
• Helena Bertinelli: 5 ft, 11 in
• Reverse Flash: 5 ft, 11 in
• Vandal Savage: 5 ft, 10 in
• Ursa: 5 ft, 10 in
• Sam Scudder: 5 ft, 10 in
• Director Bones: 5 ft, 10 in
• Hugo Strange: 5 ft, 10 in
• Green Arrow: 5 ft, 10 in
• Dan Turpin: 5 ft, 10 in
• Professor Ivo: 5 ft, 10 in
• Queen Bee: 5 ft, 9 in
• Madame Xanadu: 5 ft, 9 in
• Mera: 5 ft, 9 in
• Mari McCabe: 5 ft, 9 in
• Gangbuster: 5 ft, 9 in
• Commissioner Gordon: 5 ft, 9 in
• Hippolyta: 5 ft, 9 in
• Captain Boomerang: 5 ft, 9 in
• Barbara Minerva: 5 ft, 9 in
• Talia al Ghul: 5 ft, 8 in
• Mr. Zsasz: 5 ft, 8 in
• Lady Shiva: 5 ft, 8 in
• Pamela Isley: 5 ft, 8 in
• Felicity Smoak: 5 ft, 8 in
• Amos Fortune: 5 ft, 8 in
• Zatanna: 5 ft, 7 in
• Black Hand: 5 ft, 7 in
• Lana Lang: 5 ft, 7 in
• Harley Quinn: 5 ft, 7 in
• Carol Ferris: 5 ft, 7 in
• Ventriloquist: 5 ft, 7 in
• Doctor Sivanna: 5 ft, 6 in
• Lois Lane: 5 ft, 6 in
• Lady Vic: 5 ft, 6 in
• Catwoman: 5 ft, 5 in
• Lisa Snart: 5 ft, 5 in
• Dr. Moon: 5 ft, 5 in
• Black Canary: 5 ft, 4 in
• Per Degaton: 5 ft, 4 in
• Kanjar Ro: 5 ft, 4 in
• Hawkgirl: 5 ft, 4 in
• Kimiyo Hoshi: 5 ft, 3 in
• Katana: 5 ft, 2 in
• Anton Arcane: 5 ft, 1 in
• Amanda Waller: 5 ft, 1 in
• Oswald Loomis: 5 ft
• Oswald Cobblepot: 4 ft, 10 in
• Dr. Psycho: 3 ft, 9 in
• Detective Chimp: 3 ft, 8 in
• Mister Mind: 3 in

These are all official DC comics heights pulled from various continuities (also can I mention how weird it is that the most common height for love interests across all DC media is 5 ft, 7 in?). Naturally I'm not going to be using these numbers for characters in quest canon height (there's some wonkiness like the Joker being 1 inch shorter than the average height of a basketball player and Mercy being the same height as Wonder Woman) but they do for the most part provide a good estimate for where characters fall in relation to one another when it comes to height. I pointedly did not include beings with really variable bodies like Brainiac or any god or Trigon because their height is best described as "whatever I want it to be".

In terms of in quest stuff the height of various characters isn't really that important for any mechanistic elements of the game but there are a few interesting things to note. Lex Luthor is surprisingly tall and while he's not a physical figure in anyway he can use his height to his advantage and loom in certain situations. It's not something to call attention to but it is there. Oswald Loomis is very short and I imagine being teased for it as a child helped to develop some of the anger issues he now currently has. Parasite's height came after his metagene transformation and so I imagine suddenly being much taller does feed into his obsession with gaining more power ever so slightly.

So here are some of the entries I think are wonky in terms of their heights:

• Joker is a touch too tall, I think something like shaving off an inch or two from his height would bring him to a more reasonable frame
• Scarecrow on the other hand is oddly short for a character noted for being tall and spindly. Whatever his final height is it should be greater than the Joker's for sure
• Mercy probably ought to be a few inches shorter as she's not an Amazon in quest
• Leonard Snart is a solid half a foot or so taller than I imagined he'd be
• The Flash and Reverse Flash should probably have the same height. Think shaving an inch off of the Flash's height is the ideal solution
• Dr. Sivanna is a lot taller than I think he should be. Removing four inches would lead to less weirdness with him being taller than Lois, Catwoman and Kanjar Ro. I figure it makes more sense if he's about the same height as Amanda Waller
• I always figured Anton Arcane would be taller considering his brother has nearly a foot and a half on him in height.

 

[King crimson]

King Crimson's Thoughts On Categorizing and Writing Evil in Comic Books
Introduction
Evil is an interesting concept to write about. It's inherently relativistic to at least some degree and there's a lot of philosophy around it. Not only that, it's philosophy that's often easy to digest and can include nuance. With the superhero genre fundamentally being about heroism, or in other words good, it's only natural that the antagonists be evil in some way or another. It is important to note that in story's the antagonist does not need to be evil. Antagonists can oppose the protagonist without in any meaningful way being evil. It's not often handled well when people do this but you can have conflicts where both people are good or at the very least do not actively act evilly.

Now I don't want to devolve too far into philosophy but I would like to introduce the idea that both actions and actors can be evil and they are not intrinsically linked. Someone could rob a company thinking that they're doing good as a Robin Hood-like figure only to unintentionally harm the livelihoods of thousands of people and make the act actually evil without being evil themselves. Someone could lash out in anger and accidentally hurt someone and while the act remains evil the person does not. The reason why I bring up this little bit about philosophy is because it's important to understand my own positions on evil with supervillains.

Now with supervillains I like to categorize them into a few different types, inherently evil, incidentally evil, intentionally evil, identifiably evil and ideally evil. Each of these categories is tied to the characters inherent relationship with evil and each one of them ought to be written in my own humble opinion.

Inherently Evil
Inherently evil characters are often the simplest and least nuanced characters but at the same time they can be the most difficult to handle. Inherently evil characters are characters to whom evil is an inherent part of their character. It's so baked into who they are that they simply cannot be any other way. Inherently evil characters lack moral agency in that they did not choose to be evil they were simply born or created that way. Examples of this kind of character in DC comics include, parademons, monsters, Nekron, the Rot, killer robots and more.

Inherently evil characters lack any real depth to their reasoning as to why they are evil as it's reduced to simply being their nature. They cannot be anything but evil and so there's no real exploration of their motivations. Oftentimes inherently evil characters lack any agency and are only evil because some higher power compels them to be evil. As such they tend to work well as minions that the hero can unload the full force of their skills on or that a group of people with different morality can team up to fight against, because there is no chance of reform or improvement of that entity. They exist to be used and disposed of.

What is interesting about an inherently evil character is what they show about another character and what additional traits they have. Nekron for example is interesting because of how people work together to deal with him and because of his role in the greater cosmology in the DC universe. The Rot is fascinating as an evil force that doesn't actually want to kill all humans and is a necessary part of life. Parademons are often simpering, cowardly and cruel and in doing so they demonstrate something about Darkseid that this is what his footsoldiers are and how they act as well as the fact that he freely throws away the lives of parademons says something about how he doesn't value them as resources. The manhunters are inherently evil but their creation shows the Guardians as fallible and highlights their arrogance but at the same time shows that there are lines they are unwilling to cross and that for all they do argue with the Green Lanterns who are our protagonists, they are still good. Inherently evil characters are basically a fulcrum which you can use to explore more interesting characters.

As such I don't think they make interesting POV characters but they make excellent minions, background elements or even serving as part of an ensemble. What they contribute to the story is not something interesting in who they are, but rather in what they do and how they act. They're less a thematic statement and more a plot element.

Incidentally Evil
Incidentally evil are a notable distinction in that they are a character who are in a sense disconnected from their evil and aren't culpable for their own actions. As such the evil acts they do perform aren't their fault. The individual in question happens to be evil because of circumstances beyond their control and not any choices on their part.

Any character who is mind controlled to act evilly falls under this category but, while it is the rarest form of evil in comics in my opinion, there are still characters who fall under this categorization. Characters like Humpty Dumpty or Big Sir perform evil actions not because they choose to perform evil, but because they are incapable of understanding what they are doing and can't be held accountable for what they do.

Characters who are incidentally evil ought to have their evil be considered tragic in some way shape or form. They're pitiable and unlike a lot of villains I think some degree of compassion should be given to them. Granted all of this is contingent on the idea that the character can't recognize that they did anything wrong and the moment someone manages to explain it to them they'll instantly stop but it is something I think should be included.

Incidentally evil characters are tricky because just beating them up and disposing of them (through death, imprisonment or however the story is going to cycle characters offscreen) doesn't give you as much catharsis or resolution. An incidentally evil character needs to be handled in such a way that's different than how the heroes normally do, because an incidentally evil character fundamentally challenges how a hero approaches dealing with evil actions when they're disconnected from anything even resembling malicious intent.

I think that the way to handle these characters is to give them long term ramifications for their actions one way or another. Either, once the character realizes they committed evil and can understand it they have to grapple with that understanding for a good long while (generally most effective for mind control stories) or you have the hero try to wrestle with having to confront said person or search for a way to help them understand what they are doing. Sending someone like Humphry Dumpler to Arkham doesn't resolve the issues he brought up and thus more needs to be done with the character in order to have it have at least some degree of success. Even if it's something as small as the hero talking them down from hurting anyone or giving them something productive they can do while imprisoned or anything along those lines, it still is needed in order to bring the story to a close effectively.

Incidentally evil characters are probably the trickiest to handle if you're not going for the mind control angle as the mind control angle effectively simplifies some of the nuance and the morality surrounding the situation as there's a clear outside factor that you can immediately blame and assign moral culpability for what goes down.

Intentionally Evil
Intentionally evil, despite what the name I've given it seems to suggest, is not someone who deliberately chooses to do evil. Rather it is someone who chooses to perform an action that is evil that places them into the role of antagonist. In other words while the person's intentions are not evil it is because of their intentions that they perform evil.

This is a very, very broad category as any well meaning individual who performs evil or becomes evil falls into this category. The thing that is most important to note is that the person is evil because of the things they chose to do and emphasis is placed on those choices. Characters in this categorization cannot recognize that what they are doing is wrong even if their choices are marked by the story as being evil to some degree or another. Some versions of Poison Ivy, Anarky, Zoom, Sinestro, Atrocitus and more all fall into this category.

I think it's important to note with intentionally evil characters is that there is a sliding degree of selfishness versus selflessness and that generally affects portrayal. The more selfless the characters intentions are, the more out of touch with reality they are and the more they lean into being some manner of insane or damaged. The more selfish the intentions, even if they are somewhat malicious or uncaring, the more the character is in some way hypocritical or arrogantly convinced that others do not know better than them.

I generally think that when portraying intentionally evil characters it's best to give them a long slow descent. Like with the boiling frog parable slowly increasing how much a character is willing to engage in evil until you reach their end state that is vastly different from the start is in my opinion the ideal way to handle this type of character, especially those who fall more on the selfish side of the scale (more selfless intentionally evil characters can more often get away with a psychotic break pushing them into what they are and speed running some of the logical hoops they have to jump through).

I also think it's important that intentionally evil characters have a point, though not necessarily a good one. They ought to be able to line up an argument that makes sense if their premises are taken to be true. Keep in mind that this does not mean that the audience or other characters have to acknowledge them as in any way right or morally justifiable but they should at least be capable of acknowledging that their argument makes sense from their point of view.

Having a character transition to become intentionally evil is tricky at times but I think it can be done well even if you have to be careful with how you write it. What you essentially need to do is demonstrate how a character comes up with the premises for their argument and then show step by step how they came to that conclusion. If the audience cannot reconstruct the intentionally evil character's logic, then their characterization will ultimately fall flat.

Identifiably Evil
Identifiably evil characters are another broad spectrum of characters and characterizations but they are an important one nonetheless. These are characters who can look at themselves and their actions and recognize that they are in some way evil but they do not care one way or another. Furthermore the narrative itself acknowledges that the characters are evil or are behaving in an evil manner but the focus is not on their evil but rather on something else instead. This is by far the broadest category of categorization of evil as well over 3/4ths of all supervillains can be included under this category (Bane, Captain Cold, Captain Boomerang, Heatwave, Javelin, Sportsmaster, Deathstroke, Deadshot, Black Manta, Brother Blood, Merlyn, Parasite, Metallo, Penguin and many many more all fall under this category).

Identifiably evil characters do not need to revel in their evil and whilst they won't deny their actions evil they'll generally have some degree of excuse for why it's okay or dismiss the question itself as stupid. They'll have a reason for their crimes but it's not one they'll attempt to justify as really being the moral high ground.

There's a lot of range within these characters and they're often the easiest ones to have take up different roles depending on what you need them for. It's difficult to parse something that's a universal bit of advice given these characters but I think the one key element that you can get to portraying these characters is that you should never have the crux of their story be about morality. The hero doesn't need to debate them and their evil does not need to be brought to the forefront of a story or made explicitly clear to the audience.

Ideally Evil
Ideally evil is the last kind of evil character and it's simultaneously the hardest and easiest to categorize. An ideally evil character is a character who in some way is meant to embody evil. Characters like Trigon or Darkseid fall under this category. There is a bit of overlap between this category and inherently evil characters but the key distinction I believe ought to be made is that these characters are meant to represent a concept beyond themselves and in a sense embody evil.

Because of this whilst ideally evil characters aren't going to have their morality explored, their character traits are used to explore something about a facet of evil or the nature of evil. Darkseid's constant ambition and cruel disregard of those beneath him is meant to highlight that the evil he represents is in some way tied to those concepts. Trigon's hatred of all life is meant to mark him as a sort of apocalyptic evil that focuses on scope as opposed to personal cruelty.

In any case ideally evil characters are where you need to get a little philosophical and thematic in your portrayal of them as characters as you're quite literally using them to represent a concept within the story. As such their behavior, characterization and the actions they take ought to be considered within the greater scope of what you want to say about evil in what you are writing. Don't be afraid to have fun with the character and use them in stories without micromanaging everything but be aware that their behavior ought to be in line with what you think evil or at least an aspect of evil would act like if personified.

 

[King crimson]

Welp I figured people would enjoy hearing my thoughts on this subject matter so here you go. Fair warning some things said here likely will be politically charged to some degree or another. I am doing my best to not be offensive and to represent places somewhat fairly but this is a matter that will almost certainly touch on some political elements as planned depictions of countries can get very charged very quickly. I hope people like this as I'm not sure how well it ultimately turned out but I thought it would be neat.

King Crimson Rambles About International Elements in Comics and in Quest
A Bit of Background
Before discussing international elements in comic books and in quest I think it's fair to lay some cards on the table regarding my own status. I am both a US citizen and a citizen of Israel. While I currently live in California, I have lived in other places and I am broadly aware of other countries. That being said I am by no means an expert on anything. I am fairly well traveled in my opinion but I have not been everywhere nor have I seen everything.

I do my best to try and portray other places fairly and in an interesting manner even if I do run into issues of not knowing much about the subject matter (I've never been to Australia or Maryland yet I have used them as locations in Quest). Generally speaking I think that you ought to try and capture a sense of wonder in each location that's being used and delved in.

Another little quirk I've tried to pick up over the years is phasing the word "American" out of my personal lexicon. I'm not the most successful at it but "American" is a nonsense in accurate term that mostly came about due to foreshortening. The United States of America is not "America" even if it can be referred to as such and certain characters in universe should 100% refer to it as such. Even ignoring the fact that there is a North and South America, Canada and Mexico are both pointedly on the North American continent. While it's not really something that's necessary due to offending anyone I feel that making that distinction is important.

None of this is really super important to the perspective I'm going to give on comics and the international elements placed within but I do want to paint a bit of a picture of what kind of person I am so that my own fundamental biases come to light at least a little bit when discussing this subject matter.

Other Countries in comics
I think it's fair to say that traditionally other countries are not spectacularly well portrayed in comics. This holds true for both Marvel and DC Comics for the most part but due to their tendency towards strong USA-centrism and their origins as existing almost entirely within those countries the USA is probably one of the most well explored and fleshed out areas in the entire DCU. Other countries aren't quite so lucky.

I'm willing to bet that there are more German characters who are Nazi's then German characters who are not Nazi's, Russia is composed of almost entirely Soviets and spies and Japan and China have an uncomfortable number of characters who look like racist caricatures. Smaller countries like Uruguay, Finland and Laos get next to nothing and then you have countries like Australia and India who are major world powers but have an incredibly low number of named characters from them and very little focus on them in comics. I don't see this as a huge blackmark on comics as they have gotten better and they do have good non-USA characters. I just think it's fair to point out that comics generally not the most even handed with their depiction of other countries historically.

Comics also have a tendency to invent locations for characters to be from so they can tell whatever story they want with whatever sort of set up they want without offending people or delving too far into an alternate history. And since their intended audience appears to be people from the United States who don't know much about the world they don't have to get into it too much. Even really great pieces of DC media like the DCAU don't really deal with real world countries that often.

Part of the reason why comic writers do this is because writing about a people and a place you are unfamiliar with is really really hard. It's inherently difficult to liken the mundane aspects of that setting and to ground characters in that culture and world if you're not part of it yourself.

My Approach to Writing International Elements
I'm not as beholden to playing it safe as comics media generally is and I'm going full on alt-history in this quest, even if those elements are for the most part not constantly loud and in your face, so I have a lot more flexibility in how I can depict other countries. That being said I do want to be respectful to other people and other countries so I try to portray them evenly and fairly as best I can. I do feel confident enough in portraying countries as actors on the world stage in this quest.

I will say that I think the best way to portray countries is to give them multiple perspectives within each country and to not have the characters of a certain ethnicity be defined by their ethnicity. A country ought to have multiple characters who all disagree with each other to some degree or another even if they all share some elements and are more aware of one another than they might otherwise be. I want to try and give each country it's own unique in-universe feeling and standards and then have characters warp and react to those standards and challenge or oppose or accept them in matters that make them distinct and interesting if I want to explore that element of who they are.

I do think it's fair to note that I will not be attempting to translate dialect. There are regional dialects and stereotypes associated with them but I do not want to try and bring that into a foreign character's presented words. I write almost everything in English, thus I'd need to effectively translate a dialect into an equivalent English one and making things more confusing and losing stuff in translation. Below are a bunch of my thoughts on how to portray various countries in the quest. Keep in mind that all of the stuff listed below is subject to change and isn't by any means the final word on the subject and that things can change.

Russia
Russia is inherently tricky for me because it's very tempting to just give in to the stereotypical portrayal of Russia as a whole because it's easy and because a lot of characters lend themselves to that. Still I'd like to do much better than that.

I think the most critical thing to my depiction of Russia in quest is that they're fundamentally divided and shattered now. The Soviet Union fell relatively recently in quest (I don't think a full decade has passed) and so while there are various remnants of other groups out and around there's no real unity. As such Russia is struggling to redefine and reconstitute itself and is leaning on certain super-elements to do so. However because of the amount of time since the Cold War the US and countries allied with them will push back.

Out of the chaos of Russia's general state you get things like Polkolistan forming their own country and the KGBeast showing up in the USA having slipped the leash. There are still people loyal to the idea of the Russia of old but the country is for the most part moving forward and trying to find their footing on the international stage.

China
I don't have a particularly pleasant portrayal of China. I probably would characterize the quest's China as selfish, secretive and constantly seeking to assert superiority. China is a country with a strong central authoritative government and one that seeks to elevate itself to being a world power. China hasn't made any big moves yet because they're still building up.

Admittedly there are a lot more martial artists in quest China, as you've got character like Lady Shiva and her sister who are from the country and there is a martial arts tradition there but while the country does somewhat retain them it is more interested in moving forward.

China's likely going to be incredibly obstructionist to foreign individuals who they view as a potential threat and they'll almost certainly have strong authoritarian leanings. The government will almost certainly be incredibly unpleasant even if the people themselves and the heroes of the country will not necessarily be.

Germany
Germany is interesting because there's a strong temptation to just take the easy way out and make Germany the Nazi capital of the world but that feels incredibly lazy to me. I'd rather make Nazi's a problem for the whole world instead of just Germany.

I instead would prefer to depict Germany as in the middle of a sort of schism. There are some radical individuals who want to return back to 1939 but for the most part Germany is incredibly anti-Nazi and is generally pretty good on the human rights type of stuff. They have a lot of care for law and the rule of law and human rights.

Germany in general does have a small superheroics scene and they have issues with a lot of idiots with delusions of Nazihood coming into the country which causes them problems but for the most part Germany is uninterested in entering any sort of superhero arms race. They are attempting to instead develop a suit for their police force/military on par with what the US and Russia have to more effectively regulate things. Germany is quietly ambitious and industrious but at the same time highly opinionated on certain subjects. Germany would likely be amongst the first to condemn Count Vertigo for his rule of Vlatava.

Japan
Japan is interesting for me since I feel that the depiction I'm going with is somewhat unique. In quest Japan has a strong focus on honor, loyalty and social obligation. They are generally fairly conservative and the power in the nation is concentrated in a few key hands. They are still democratic even if they have been making a turn towards more authoritarian measures.

Japan also has a highly corrupt legal and police force. The push towards convicting no matter what has lead to people being incentivized to not think twice about who they are locking up and why. That being said Japan's super-teams are likely going to have idol/celebrity culture elements mixed in. I also think it's worth noting that the various yakuza groups of Japan generally manage to slip the net of government authority and crackdowns and in more rural areas they can effectively contest and pass whatever they want.

Japan is primarily interested in modernizing and while they don't want to abandon their past and their history, the country as a whole is generally interested in securing a strong foothold in the ever changing future.

Mexico
I won't say too much about Mexico save that Mexico has a lot of problems dealing with various cartels and syndicates which is only made worse by the presence of individuals like Duran who hate absolutely everyone. Mexico's official government is generally pretty friendly and open to working with others but the various criminal elements present in Mexico are fairly difficult to stamp out and regularly cause them problems.

Canada
Canada is likely to be depicted as a more liberal country than the USA. They're not nearly as aggressive or interested in competing on the world stage and are generally content improving things for themselves. Canada has no real interest in making the first big leaps and generally likes to wait to see what other countries do before adopting measures themselves.

There should be some degree of difference in French and English Canadians but not huge ones.

Israel
Israel is probably going to get a grey depiction in quest. They're almost certainly going to militarize any technology they can as well as any metahumans willingly working for them but at the same time they are going to be constantly pressed by attacks from different sides. Israel is generally willing to work with other nations but some of the principles zealots within the nation cripple their ability to get things done diplomatically and they likely won't be great at actually working with others.

Israel will likely never be front and center in the quest but I'm likely generally going to depict them more positively than negatively.

England
England is interesting. England isn't really a country as far as I'm aware (The UK is though) and the various factions within England all have their own distinct opinions and positions. Generally though they're going to be content doing their own thing and remaining separate from the rest of the world when possible. They'll generally side with the US on various matters and there are no real hot button issues there for the most part just yet.

They do have an absolutely massive magic scene as well as a thriving superhero and villain community. Per square mile England might actually have the most enhanced individuals than any other country but because of that a lot of these extranormal elements have their own cultures and rules as opposed to the US or other countries which tend to be less largely organized.

France
France is likely going to be portrayed for the most part pretty positively. The government itself is very pro-democracy and will generally be relatively hands-off. They're not interested in being the absolute best so much as they are in staying relevant and near the top.

France does have a developed superhero and villain community. The Brain is French and a lot of his musings on philosophy are inspired by French philosophers. The Brain is by no means a patriotic Frenchman and he actually has a lot of issues with the country and indeed the world at large. Part of that is due to being a gay man in the 60s but he actually distinctly disdains the French government for not actually living up to what he thinks more egalitarian ideals would look like in practice.

 

[King crimson]

So, here's a fun thing to hopefully tide you over a bit while I work on the update (sorry stuff involving paychecks and law school acceptance has come up and delayed me, though I'm still confident I can get out something this week). This list is based mostly on the "incomplete list of the types/schools of magic and as such it's very much misleading if taken as an objective concrete fact. Every point being made here can be debated even if I am putting forth my own arguments for it. I hope you guys enjoy.

Who is the Best at Each School of Magic?
Before I get into the list I do want to make a few disclaimers regarding how the list works.

Firstly, and foremostly the list is restricted solely to human entities currently alive by the time of the quest. Including gods, demons, aliens and other such outside context entities in the list felt a little disingenuous and it would make some categories incredibly hard to determine. Furthermore, I wanted to keep it focused only on individuals who are alive by the time of the quest and who are active magic users in order to both simplify things and make it more relevant to quest planning.

Secondly, this list is all in good fun and as such I will be pointing out that ranking "the best" is a little arbitrary when the divisions between schools of magic are very much not clear cut and don't go cleanly at all. As such a lot of the arguments put forth here could be made for ranking someone as the best in another category.

Thirdly this list is not a "power ranking" and is not to be taken as a sign that these individuals are the best in a fight necessarily. I prioritized ranking breadth and depth of knowledge, ability to use, scale of magical ability and individual innovation over "who can X the hardest". As such the individuals listed here are not necessarily the greatest human magic users in terms of power level but rather in terms of knowledge level.

With those point illustrated I'd like to get to the fun stuff. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions

Necromancy: Felix Faust
In my opinion the person I would rank as the best necromancer is Felix Faust. While he did kind of pervert a lot of the discipline and bias people against the art, as well as blending in a good deal of diabolism and such, Felix Faust's contributions to the field of necromancy and his understanding of the soul and ease of use in working with it are enough that I would consider him the best at the subject.

Felix Faust is an utter and absolute shitbag of a human being and is not someone to be admired but he has cheated death for so long and effectively done "horcruxes on crack" to the point where it can be argued that almost everything he does is to some degree or another necromancy because he's mostly dead. Granted he is still "alive" enough to count for this list, but Felix Faust's track record managed to beat out other contenders in the running, especially considering he's one of the few people to specialize primarily in necromancy and thus get a leg up on most magic users who only lightly dabble in it.

Blood Magic: Brother Blood
Blood magic was a tough one to figure out. There are a lot of individuals who gain magical power through a bloodline of some sort so it wasn't clean. That being said I think Brother Blood just barely manages to come out on top.

Admittedly the ritual murder of a father by a son so that the son can inherit the father's knowledge and power is a dark act but it's a whole lot more active than most blood magic being practiced, it's something that potentially gets exponentially stronger. It's also very clearly blood magic that's being involved and by extension it turns everything he does into an act of blood magic. Beyond that Brother Blood has other tricks he can use Blood Magic for. Using Raven as a conduit for Trigon, using Beast Boy as a conduit to the animal kingdom and more. I mean it might be a bit of a copout to say that Brother Blood is the best user of blood magic but at the same time I feel he has the name for a reason.

Animation: Kraklow
Here's another tricky one. Morgaine Le Fay was actually in the running for this for her creation of multiple homunculi children. However, while Morgaine could certainly turn sticks act like serpents and perform other feats of animation, I wanted to give the top spot to a magic user who more clearly animates inanimate things and thus makes more use of it in a clean sense of it. As such Kraklow ended up on top.

Kraklow is the best at "pure" animation due to his extensive work in bringing clay to life and using it to have various forms. Kraklow isn't notable for his magical expertise in much else but his amount of knowledge on how to animate virtual armies of clay entities is enough to earn him this spot in my opinion. It wasn't a clean victory but considering he's nominally a part of a group known as the "forgotten villains" I think it's still a win for him

Divination: Madame Xanadu
Madame Xanadu is the character who in my opinion is most clearly linked to divination. Her whole schtick is tarot reading and seeing the future. If aliens were allowed on the list Atrocitus would arguably out match her and Madame Xanadu is by no means a perfect seer but she's up there. She naturally can scry and use more mundane divination but I felt the sheer amount of peering into the future and gaining revelations about people through magic Madame Xanadu could achieve earned her a spot above most others. Morgaine Le Fay's sister does clearly have her beat in this category and while Madame Xanadu kind of has a tendency to not user her prescience very effectively she is the character who I believe qualifies as the greatest human at divination.

Enchantment: Merlin
So, get ready to see Merlin's name pop up again and again because he's both not dead and arguably the greatest in many, many fields of magic. What earns him his place as the greatest at enchantment is the creation of his swords. Those alone can potentially let a mortal human take on a god through the strength of their enchantments. And if that wasn't enough almost everything magical or enchanted about Camelot can probably trace its way back to Merlin (and if not Merlin then someone Merlin taught). Merlin's skill at enchantment is so head and shoulders above the rest that even insanely powerful entities would struggle to get around his work or even attempt to replicate it. When you're able to match the entities removed from the running in order to make the list a little fairer, you've more than earned the spot.

Exorcism: Merlin
Hello here's Merlin as the best at something again. There aren't a lot of people who purely work in exorcism. As such Merlin kind of one this one as he has numerous feats of banishing souls to other dimensions and such. As such he kind of won this one by default even if he didn't contribute a lot to the field and hasn't shaped a lot of modern exorcism. All that being said he is still quite capable of it. The man was quite literally conceived as a way to get back at incredibly powerful demons so naturally he's very good at exorcising them.

Transmutation: The Wizard Shazam/Mamaragan
The wizard Shazam also kind of one this by default. Not a lot of magic users have very clean feats of transmutation and while Shazam isn't a name that comes to mind when it comes to the development of Transmutation, he is quite capable of it. Beside physically altering the shape of the champions he empowers to creating and maintaining the Rock of Eternity, Shazam has incredible feats of transmutation and is quite capable of incredible things with it. This is one I would be interested in seeing who people would challenge as potentially "better".

Curses/Black Magic: Morgaine Le Fay
Morgaine Le Fay finally earns her spot as the best in something. Morgaine Le Fay throughout all of DC comics and DC related media is nigh universally remarked upon as a master of black magic. In the DCQU this has translated to her excelling at curses and destructive magic.

Her skill in this kind of sorcery enabled her to bring down Camelot and is one of the branches where she innovated on her own instead of learning from Merlin. Morgaine has had centuries to improve her skills and as such she's only gotten better at it with time.

Restoration/White Magic: Wotan
Wotan is a weird one, but I feel that he still is arguably the greatest Restoration/White Magic user in the DCQU for the simple fact of their feat of self-resurrection. Self-healing is still healing after all, and Wotan is effectively immortal due to the fact that no one has figured out a way around their white magic to permanently put them down. Wotan can also do wards and most other more unique forms of white magic but I feel that achieving a level of immortality greater than powerful older sorcerors like Felix Faust is more deserving and earns Wotan the top spot here.

Invocation: The Wizard Shazam/Mamaragan
Shazam easily takes the top spot here. The empowerment of Black Adam alone requires drawing upon the powers of multiple gods and Shazam has managed that several dozen times over without actually ever negotiating with any of these entities. His feats in this realm are so insane that no one else even comes close.

Conjuration: Merlin
Merlin is back for the third time and this time he's taking home the gold in conjuration. Merlin is someone who has an argument for almost any school of magic but in the case of conjuration, I feel the creation of his swords is a feat that required it and coupled with his quasi-immortality that let him learn and live for centuries, he's almost certainly the very best at conjuration

Order Magic: Kent Nelson
This one might be a bit of a cop out but there is a reason why Kent Nelson is the ideal host for Nabu. Additionally, he's been the host of a Lord of Order since WW2 and as such he's been able to more than pick up a bit of understanding in how order magic works. He's not incredibly powerful but he is someone who deserves the spot simply for how much he knows and understands.

Chaos Magic: The Curse
Chaos magic was incredibly hard to find my pick for, due to how all the greatest users of it are almost always very, very non-human, but in the end I settled on The Curse as my pick. The Curse is an ancient Mesopotamian warlord who learned magic and has since made himself immortal (though he's stuck in a helmet and needs to possess people). The Curse does know chaos magic and I figured time would ultimately give him the edge to win out in this regard as he's one of the few humans noted to specialize in it and he's certainly the longest lived individual of that group.

Diabolism: John Constantine
Constantine's placement is weird. He's definitely not the most powerful and he's definitely not the most knowledgeable. What I believe earns him the spot as "the best" is the fact that most diabolists end up being screwed over or controlled by demons and John Constantine tends to avoid that much better than most while still making deals with powerful entities. More famous diabolists like Felix Faust or Brother Blood have knowledge and skills but are entirely on the back foot when working with demons and arguably are constantly needing to work to not have things blow up in their face. John Constantine on the other hand is able to mostly come out on top if not always unscathed.

On top of that while Constantine is not the most powerful nor the most knowledgeable, he's not exactly a weakling and he's got a lot of knowledge including old Sumerian stuff that most people don't use. He's probably a leading expert in Diabolism if not the leading expert (which is probably either Merlin or Jason Blood or Felix Faust) and that coupled with his other traits is what I feel makes him the best at diabolism.

Transposition: Ian Karkull
Ian Karkull is interesting. He wasn't very notable when he was active in WW2 though he was powerful. However, he became exponentially more powerful after Vandal Savage attempted to "dispose of him" and he got trapped in the Shadowlands. Ian Karkull has the usual bevy of transposition powers (flight teleportation etc.), but what I think clinches him the top spot is his use of magic to enter and exit the Shadowlands, a whole separate dimension that most people don't touch. It's not exactly willingly but I do think it counts and it puts him a step above most other people especially considering he can also drag other people back in.

Thaumaturgy: Merlin
Initially I'd put the winner of this category as Rama Khan but after a review by GhostKing 666 which pointed out a mistake in the understanding of events I'd been working with, I had to reassess my evaluation as most of the modern day Rama Khan's achievements were passive in nature. While I could make the argument that Jarhanpur's power was Rama Khan's due to how Jarhanpur's magic work and that the first Rama Khan likely set up magic to make it work that way, the fact of the matter is that feels a little too iffy for me to be solid on it and the first Rama Khan is very definitively dead so unless I'm willing to make the case that Billy Batson's feats are Hercules' then I'm not exactly in a great position.

As such I had to review the many list of candidates that I had for this category. I did think it over for a few minutes but in the end it came down to being between Merlin and Shazam. And while Shazam has some impressive feats, he's ultimately a lot less impressive in the more overtly thaumaturgical department. Both he and Merlin obviously know a lot about magic but Merlin has a lot more obvious dabbling in various other disciplines and has also taught magic to a lot more people which suggests that he is comfortable working with magic that isn't inherently his own. And each of his students went on to be incredibly good at what they do (Morgaine made the list and Jason Blood was a solid candidate in a few categories). None of the people Shazam taught were nearly as impressive. Even beyond that Tim Hunter, arguably the character with the most magical potential and one who is considered to be tied incredibly closely to thaumaturgy due to his nature, is actively compared to Merlin and not Shazam. As such Merlin ends up edging out Shazam as it seems more logical to me that the character who is widely believed to be the greatest mortal magic user ever with feats of thaumaturgy and various evidence suggesting he's very good at it beats out the opposition.

So yeah, Merlin ends up cracking this four times (twice as much as his competition) which should let you know both how absolutely bonkers he is, and by extension the utterly insane potential of Tim Hunter.

 

[King crimson]

So this is something. I don't know how much people would like it but I did promise to try and get something up. As such I hope people enjoy what I'd consider an interesting little peak into the greater Metropolis dynamic.

King Crimson Rambles about Various Metropolis Villains
Toyman
Toyman's a great villain in my opinion because he's not only able to vary the type of threat Superman faces by being a mad scientist, but his theming naturally lends itself well to creative set ups and he's naturally always got a slightly creepy vibe to him.

I also like my own take on the character and his motivations and personality. I've mentioned this before but Toyman is essentially a child who never properly grew up and as such fixates on external problems and causes for why he isn't happy and then attempts to remove and destroy them. However the real reason Toyman is incapable of being happy is that he's incapable of moving on past the "wrongs" done to him and childishly lashing out, while at the same time refusing to live on anyone's schedule but his own or acknowledge his own faults and mistakes. Toyman fixates on Superman but even if there was no Superman for him to fixate on he'd still inevitably find someone to blame for what goes wrong in his life and attempt to destroy them.

This in turn plays into how Toyman is both one of the most social and least social of all of Superman's rogues. He can work well with people but at the same time he requires an outside enemy to focus on as the objective and he's liable to blame others for everything going wrong. Toyman wants to be loved and interact with people but his general demeanor and personality, lack of social skills and childishness leads to him pushing people away which in turn causes him to double down on his problematic aspects and hate people who aren't his "toys" even more.

Toyman functions in the Metropolis underworld as a semi-predictable powerhouse who can be reasoned with and worked with. Toyman doesn't often go out of his way to interact with large groups of people and while he'll single-mindedly fixate on his goal, he does engage in some level of exchange with those who'd aid him. Toyman does build his own workforce whenever possible but his skill in robotics enables him to essentially sell his talent to more common criminals in order to get an initial level of build up. What few surviving gangs exist in Metropolis generally don't want to touch Toyman due to his tendency to inevitably go after Superman but they are occasionally willing to barter with him.

Toyman and Metallo get along weirdly well due to them both having a hyper-fixation on killing Superman but at the same time he and the Ultra-Humanite would likely despise each other and be incapable of working together long term.

Ultra-Humanite
Ultra-Humanite is an interesting entity. They are currently the most notorious supervillain in Metropolis and as such that grants them a certain sort of status in dealings with the greater whole.

A lot of Superman's villains come from very working class backgrounds and are not very refined in their behaviors. It might sound weird considering that Superman's most recognizable supervillain (Lex Luthor) is a billionaire, but once you start actually looking at his Metropolis-based villains you see that they are janitors (Parasite), soldiers (Metallo), toymakers (Toyman), radio and tv hosts (Livewire and Prankster), derranged scientists (Blackrock) and literal hobos (Madness) more often than they are ultra-rich, high society individuals. As such a lot of Superman's foes are naturally more boorish and unrefined. Ultra-Humanite is an exception to this rule and that has helped them to stand out in the world of supervillainy.

Ultra-Humanite is a person who is classy and enjoys the trappings of high society. They have opinions on art and opera and so much more. Their diction is refined and erudite and Ultra-Humanite, despite having the body of an albino gorilla maintains a sort of politeness in all of their interactions. What separates Ultra-Humanite from individuals like the Penguin is that Ultra-Humanite very well could integrate into high society fairly easily and yet they still choose not to do so.

Ultra-Humanite seeks to improve society at large and as such sees transgression of physical form as a necessary advancement. They are very much both a mad scientist and a mad philosopher as they do have a worldview that justifies undermining and attacking "society" and straying outside the bounds of civility in order to improve it as a whole. For a sort of metaphorical comparison I see Ultra-Humanite as being similar to an old fashioned courteous noble who got it into their head that the current class system is wrong so they decide to go on a murder spree to force others to confront their issue of choice only Ultra-Humanite does it through mad science.

Also, to address something that may not be clear but I have been doing for a good while, Ultra-Humanite is neither male nor female in quest. They would be using they/them pronouns and while other characters will pretty regularly misgender Ultra-Humanite (and I'll sometimes do so unintentionally), the broader intention is that Ultra-Humanite has largely sidestepped identifying with any gender in particular (due in part to the abandonment of the necessity of a corporeal form). Ultra-Humanite is not meant to be representative of people who are non-binary (they're weird as hell in terms of brain state) though they are non-binary to some extent and I do intend to include and account for that.

To return back to Ultra-Humanite as an individual in the quest, their own genuine politeness and willingness to negotiate on non-critical issues makes them quite capable of working with outside individuals when possible. That being said Ultra-Humanite's preferred state of cooperation with others is either with people who genuinely share their ideals or with those who have been coerced and thus are unable to effectively turn on him.

Parasite
Parasite is an almost literal murder-hobo, driven by envy and greed. Unlike most of Superman's rogues, the criminal elements of the city don't bother negotiating or working with him. Parasite is functionally persona non-grata because he's terminally incapable of not feeding on others if he has the opportunity to do so. Parasite still prioritizes getting to feed on certain individuals over others but at the same time it's incredibly annoying and a massive risk trying to work with someone who will turn on you and kill you the moment they decide that they might as well do so given that they have the opportunity right in front of them.

Parasite is fun for me to write because he's kind of an idiot. He's borderline incapable of long-term planning, he actively wastes and misuses what would be an incredibly dangerous top-tier ability and ultimately undoes his own success. A lot like Toyman, Parasite does want to be respected admired and loved though unlike Toyman he thinks that power is the way to do that and that he needs to step over others to get that power. This in turn causes Parasite to feel the need to feed and as such gain power which in turn drives people away from him due to him acting as little more than a monster. This then causes a vicious cycle where as Parasite feeds he feels he needs to feed even more and ultimately gets further away from the initial goal of why he wanted power in the first place. He's unintentionally Sisyphean in his behavior and it's interesting to see that in a villain.

The only supervillains Parasite is capable of working with long term are those who are almost never worth draining (like Metallo whose cyborg nature naturally makes him highly resistant to being drained by Parasite).

Metallo
I don't have too much that I feel would be particularly interesting to add about Metallo. He's single-mindedly murderous but at the same time he is capable of working with others and engaging in cooperation. I do think it is neat that of all of Superman's foes in Metropolis, minus maybe some of the people working directly under Lex, Metallo is very clearly the foe with the greatest amount of combat training. While his new cyborg nature kind of renders a lot of the information moot or redundant, Metallo is one of the few Metropolis Superman villains who could pick up a gun and fire it at a target a fair distance away fairly accurately. Metallo also has more knowledge on CQC than almost every other villain (and definitely the most of everyone on this list).

Metallo is interesting in that he's potentially set up to become a mercenary once again due to having a need for money (to buy more kryptonite) and the skills to do so, but he's unwilling to do so due to his current fixation. Metallo is also notable in that unlike almost every other villain listed above he's just straight up incurably driven to violence and madness. Every villain listed above could hypothetically be talked down from being a supervillain with a good enough invincible therapist. Metallo cannot be talked down as the fundamental sensory deprivation and agony he survived has caused him to fairly firmly cement his hate to the point where he cannot move past it while still remaining functionally himself.

Metallo is only loosely familiar with Metropolis due to not actually being a local but he does know a good few places to hide and he's remarkably capable of working with the criminal elements in the city dumb enough to cooperate with him. Metallo does have no desire to lead though and only works with others to gave the resources or upgrades he feels are necessary for his own plans to kill Superman.

Blackrock
Blackrock also isn't a character I have a ton of interesting things to say about. I will say that like a lot of the villains listed above, his goals and behaviors are inherently self-defeating but in Blackrock's case that's due to a literal drug addiction and thus it's not really unique (I imagine that acting on an addiction is inherently self-defeating because it will only ever get you more addicted or dead). He doesn't really have much presence or command in the city and can't really cooperate with others

Luminous
Again, this is less about the crimes and careers of the character and his effect on Metropolis as Luminous is currently very much a nobody but I do think I have an interesting little bit of dramatic irony regarding him that I think is interesting to talk about.

Luminous initially hid as long as he did because he wasn't especially notable. He was easily over-looked and ignored and that let him fly under the radar for a very long time. In order to combat this Luminous desired the spotlight and as such began sending Lois information. When Luminous' craving for attention was not fulfilled in a way he liked and people started looking into him and what he did, Luminous grew vicious and tried to get revenge on Lois. Then he attracted Superman's attention just long enough to be seen by the city and labelled a supervillain and then promptly disappeared into a dark hole (place with no light) by Sam Lane, an individual tied to both the military and Lois Lane, both of which Luminous tried to do damage to in his quest for recognition and remaining in the limelight. Since then he's become not really remembered and on a meta-level even I sometimes forget about him.

I do think it's an interesting little recursion of the whole "supervillains having self-defeating behavior" as his behavior almost consistently backfired due to Luminous making assumptions that were wrong as well as powerful enemies. Luminous could have made a living in Metropolis as a supervillain if he'd been given enough time to dig into the city but because his early work was so attention grabbing he was unable to actually gain any contacts with the Metropolis underworld

 

[King crimson]

My thoughts about Character's Voice's/manner of speaking
This is what I imagine each character somewhat sounds like. This is not necessarily canon and might change later on. Feel free to ask me about other characters if you are interested in hearing more on this subject.

• Lex Luthor: Lex Luthor has a deep baritone gravelly voice. I always imagine his voice as being the Clancy Brown take from the DCAU.
• Mercy Graves: Mercy Graves has a voice on the lower end of the register and is relatively dry in delivery most of the time. She's got both a sarcastic and a sadistic edge that will fairly often leak into her voice if she's not trying to keep it as flat and professional as possible
• Pamela Isley: Pamela speaks with a slow slightly breathy tone most of the time. Her words are velvety and caress the ear. However when Pamela gets emotionally excited about something, she looses a lot of the smooth calm relaxing tone she normally adopts and instead shifts into a more manic, fire and brimstone preacher style of speaking and tone of voice.
• Professor Ivo: Professor Ivo spoke with a very distinct wheezing rasp in his later years. When he was younger he spoke a lot clearer and more flamboyantly. I always imagined him as sounding a little like Dr. Eggman with a terrible, terrible smoking habit that was dealing its toll upon him.
• Katherine Kane: Katherine's voice is a little on the flatter end though she is by no means emotionless. Katherine is fairly brusque and direct when talking and likes to get to the point. Around people she trusts, Katherine gets a little more chatty but for the most part she remains relatively terse.
• Roxanne Sutton: Roxy speaks with a mix of a New York and Gotham accent. Her voice is loud and bold and she often doesn't really regulate her volume beyond how she's feeling in the moment.
• Rebecca Carstairs: Rebecca speaks in a deliberate and measured manner. Slight traces of an Oregon accent come into play when she's extraordinarily angry but for the most part that's unnoticeable to the average listener.
• Carol Ferris: Carol has really two voices/styles of speaking. As Carol Ferris she has a Californian accent and is a lot more willing to do display emotions with her tone. As Ultraviolet, Carol actively hides her accent and tries to project her voice a lot more, whilst also making sure to keep things generally heroic in tone even if it does sometimes slip up.
• Karl Helfern: Karl speaks with a German accent. His voice is noticeably older and more weathered.
• Cassandra Luthor: I always pictured Cassandra Luthor as sounding a little bit like Azula from Avatar the Last Airbender. Obviously, she can regulate and fake her tone but her natural speaking tone is one that constantly projects a sense of superiority that masks what emotions she's genuinely thinking. Cassandra speaks Spanish with a Castilian accent.
• Mari McCabe: Mari speaks relatively straightforwardly though she'll happily include more flowery language when possible. Her voice is relatively difficult to pick out of a crowd but she tends to stay level, calm and confident when she is speaking instead of modulating wildly with pitch and tone.
• Oswald Loomis: Oswald has a relatively high pitched tone of voice. He's not particularly loud or screechy but he does tend to be fairly camp in his delivery and likes to exaggerate emotional response. I see his voice as a sort of cross between Pee Wee Herman and Mr. Rogers.
• Jinx: Jinx's voice is fairly similar to the Lauren Tom performance from the Teen Titans show. That being said I imagine quest!Jinx's voice to be a little deeper. Jinx has a distinct deranged sounding cackle.
• Carl Draper: Carl Draper speaks with a slight Kansas accent and a general paternalistic bent and tone to his words. His voice very rarely moves away from a slightly self-satisfied and amused tone. Carl is relatively quiet though when he gets going he can get frighteningly intense.
• Felicity Smoak: I will freely admit that I imagine Felicity more or less sounding like the version from Arrow with a more reigned in and business oriented tone most of the time.
• Marie Louise Dahl: Marie Louise Dahl has two distinct voices. The voice she performs to be taken seriously is flat dry and often level in tone. It is business-oriented and uninterested in anyone else's shit. Marie also notably tries to pitch herself down to sound "more adult". Marie's actual speaking voice is a lot more high pitched and childish and has a notable Gotham/New Jersey accent. Marie generally does not use her natural speaking voice in public unless she is speaking to someone she is very personally close to, or she is emotionally compromised. Marie used to have a third style of speaking her "Baby Doll" voice which took her natural speaking voice and exaggerated and enhanced the childish elements of it. This voice has more or less been retired and Marie doesn't speak like this at all anymore.
• Edward Nygma: Edward Nygma's voice is pompous smug and constantly performative. I seem him speaking like a twisted cruel version of Alex Trebek that swallowed a thesaurus and is now regurgitating as many large words as possible to clear his airway whilst also trying to make everyone around him look stupid.
• Rose Wilson: Rose speaks with a slight California accent. She's terse, blunt and lets a general sense of disdain leak into her tone when she's not in "soldier mode".
• Dr. Moon: Dr. Moon constantly talks like he's trying to project the most normal boring, milquetoast personality possible. He's quiet, unassuming and not really much of a loud-mouth. However, if he goes into full mad scientist mode, he drops all regulation of his tone and instead wildly veers into a deranged jubilant self-satisfaction with his own sadism and madness. Dr. Moon is at his scariest when he's happy and excited and he doesn't really display sadness or anger.
• Lisa Snart: Lisa often alternates between speaking cloyingly sweet and viciously acerbic and cruel depending on who she's talking to. She doesn't have any notable accent when speaking.
• Leonard Snart: Leonard speaks with a slight South Midland accent. He's business-like and blunt in his speech and prone to profanity. Leonard generally tries to project himself as a big tough gruff guy and so doesn't often display happiness, joy or sadness openly when speaking.
• Samuel Scudder: Sam's got a working class style of speech though he's a lot more bombastic and braggadocious than most people. I see him as talking in a style slightly similar to a carnival barker.
• Mick Rory: The accent's not at all correct but I kind of imagine Mick talking like a younger Mike Ehrmantraut. In general I think being gruff and straightforward but also having a bit of a caring side towards kids suits Mick well. Granted I don't have a crazy solid idea for his voice.
• Lucy Lane: Lucy Lane can regulate her tone fairly well but she tends to be on the louder side of things. Lucy doesn't speak constantly but when she does speak she wants to be heard. She's generally fairly calm and level but she can get irked and when someone gets under her skin she's very willing to get loud and a little more screechy than she wants to be in a professional setting.
• Meena Dhawan: Meena speaks very, very fast. She's by far the biggest motor mouth in Quest and she's capable of completely overwhelming someone unprepared to listen to her. Meena is generally bubbly and positive in how she presents things.
• Caitlin Snow: Caitlin has a relatively composed voice but that doesn't mean she doesn't get emotional or get more intense. I see her as sounding similar to how when Jennifer Hale voices her, only generally more openly emotive and expressive than how she is usually portrayed
• Louise Lincoln: Louise Lincoln is someone I imagine having a rather shrill voice and being a lot more out there and abrasive in her delivery. In a lot of ways, she'd kind of lean into an easy sort of "wicked witch" archetype for her voice.
• Vivian D'Aramis: Vivian D'Aramis speaks with a French accent. She tends to speak a little slowly and carefully enunciates things.
• Constance D'Aramis: Constance D'Aramis also speaks with a French accent. Her tone and cadence are a bit bolder and more confrontational than her twin sisters are, so her accent actually tends to be more pronounced.
• Robert Frost: I always see Robert Frost as talking very dryly and flatly, keeping a near emotionless tone at all times though he would often get irked and aggravated. I'd almost compare him to Owen Burnett from Gargoyles except he's a little more emotive when it comes to expressing annoyance.
• Nathan Warbow: Nathan has a fairly deep voice. That being said he's also very quiet and soft spoken. Nathan similarly tries to hide his more emotional and sensitive side behind a more gruff tone of voice.
• Paige Monroe: This might be a cop out but I see Paige as having a tone somewhat similar to that of the DCAU version of the character. The main difference in terms of delivery is that I see the quest's version of Paige Monroe as being more operatic and pitiable at times rather than the more bitter angry and enraged version of the DCAU. Paige speaks dramatically and operatically, making it immensely clear to anyone who listens to her, exactly how she feels at any given moment.
• Lana Lang: Lana Lang is someone who I imagine still speaks with a slight Kansas drawl. It's not exceedingly out there, but it is present. I also imagine Lana as being a relatively light speaker and generally keeps things fairly open and honest with her words and tone.
• Rene Carpenter: Rene Carpenter speaks methodically and calculatedly. She deliberately tries to cultivate a somewhat friendly, approachable and professional facade when she's not being obsequious to someone else.
• Elaine Marsh Morton: Elaine speaks English with a distinct RP (Received Pronunciation) accent. She speaks French and Latin with an awful, over-powering English accent. Elaine generally speaks a little bit like a Jane Austen novel, or more accurately, what a stereotypical impression of dialogue in a Jane Austen novel might sound like. As such Elaine will often employ double-speak when she wants to convey a point. She won't say that she "assassinates people" but instead she'll phrase it as something along the lines that she "does away with undesirables". The mask will slip and she will get more direct when pressed but generally Elaine likes to play at being a well-mannered and proper noble.
• Edward Wells: Edward Wells doesn't speak with an accent. His voice is often bland and neutral but has a distinct bit of contempt leaking into it. Edward is somewhat taciturn, blunt and to the point and his speech is a reflection of that.
• Siobhan McDougal: Siobhan speaks with a heavy Irish accent. She's generally rather passive and quiet but when she gets riled up she tends to get a lot louder and more foul mouthed. Siobhan's singing voice is a fair bit different then her speaking voice. I imagine her to sound a bit like a younger grungier Dolores O'Riordan.
• Helena Bertinelli: Helena Bertinelli speaks English without any notable accent. She does speak Italian with a slight Tuscan accent. Helena speaks straightforwardly and, when not dealing with children, is actually relatively crude, blunt and aggressive. With children present, Helena notably tones these aspects aspects of her way of speaking down a fair bit
• Raven: I feel like this is also a cop out but I imagine that Raven speaks like the Teen Titans Tara Strong version.
• Fixit: Fixit sounds fairly like a text to speech program. He can convey emotions but his voice is notably artificial and modulated.
• Leslie Willis: Leslie Willis speaks with a slight Maryland accent though it's not incredibly heavy. She speaks fast and often likes to exaggerate or emphasize her words in a more dramatic fashion. Leslie was already capable of doing very accurate impressions of other people but since becoming Livewire she's gotten even better, being able to effectively modulate her voice to sound like nearly anyone for at least a short period of time.
• Starfire: Starfire has a genuinely sweet, upbeat and optimistic tone when speaking. However due to having gotten her language skills from Cassandra, all of her vocabulary and accents transfer over to some degree.
• Talia al Ghul: Talia al Ghul speaks English with a mix of an RP and an Arabic accent. Her actual accent does not line up at all with any actual single country and is immensely difficult to place beyond just "foreign". Talia can modulate and alter her voice to speak in a wide variety of accents but prefers to indicate some degree of foreignness and uniqueness when she wants to be memorable. Talia tends to speak very deliberately and languidly.
• Ra's al Ghul: Ra's al Ghul speaks English in a Victorian accent. He tends to keep his tone imperious and cold. Ra's al Ghul's Arabic has modernized a fair bit but every so often he'll slip in an odd old pronunciation or term and keen listeners could theoretically pick up on it. Likewise his German and French similarly well occasionally out that he first learned how to speak medieval dialects of the language.
• Lois Lane: Lois Lane tends to speak fast and with a dry sarcastic edge to her words. Again probably a cop out but I like to imagine that she sounds very similar to her DCAU version.
• Jimmy Olsen: Jimmy Olsen has a slightly dweeby sounding voice. The sort of voice that makes you think he got picked on in high school and had his lunch money stolen.
• Dan Turpin: Dan Turpin sounds like a gruffer slightly more deep voiced Jack Kirby.
• Clark Kent: Clark Kent has really two voices he uses. The Clark Kent voice contains a slight but noticeable Kansas drawl while as Superman the accent is completely gone. Clark does this deliberately in order to obfuscate his identity and to make it more difficult to connect Clark Kent with Superman. Both of them have fairly rich timbres to their voice.
• Parasite: Parasite initially had a whiny, nasally tone as Rudy Jones. As Parasite he's kept a lot of the petulant vocabulary but now his voice sounds deeper and has a bit of a reverb to it.
• Bruno Manneheim: Bruno Manneheim speaks with a very heavy Baltimore accent. He's gruff aggressive and almost always shouting or yelling something. He doesn't really modulate his volume.
• Metallo: Metallo has a distinctly South African accent. His voice is identical to what it was before he became Metallo save perhaps that now it's coming out of a speaker which leads to some slight distortion. His tone is snide, angry and constantly looking for a fight.
• Toyman: Toyman has a light slightly nasally and childish voice. He's fairly soft spoken and doesn't get exceptionally loud though his laughter is over the top and maniacal. Toyman tends to exude a quiet subtle menace when he talks.
• Ultra-Humanite: I always imagine Ultra-Humanite speaking like a basso profundo opera singer that has some cotton wedged into their mouth, causing them to talk a little oddly. Ultra-Humanite has a very, very deep voice and a flowery almost Shakespearean style of speaking.
• Brainiac: I'm going to go with a classic but I imagine Brainiac sounding like a mix of Corey Burton's DCAU performance and a text to speech device.
• Lobo: Lobo to me always kind of sounds like John DiMaggio channeling Hulk Hogan without outright screaming and reigning it in a touch. He is very, very loud and over the top though.
• Hellgrammite: Hellgrammite has an unusually high pitched eerie voice mixed in with a rasping quality and a distorted echo to it. I imagine he sounds like a raspier, echoey, more sibilant version of Judge Doom's voice from the climax of Who Framed Roger Rabit.
• Bruce Wayne: Again it might be obvious but I've got to go with Kevin Conroy's DCAU performance for Batman.
• Wade Eiling: I always imagine Wade Eiling to sound loud and confrontational without being over the top cartoonish. I always imagine him to sound a little like Sam Elliot's take on Thunderbolt Ross.
• Queen Bee: Queen Bee is someone whom I imagine to sound like the Young Justice version and be voiced by Marina Sirtis.
• Count Vertigo: Count Vertigo speaks with a notably heavy Eastern European accent. His actual accent would be tied to the fictional country of Vlatava but I imagine it might sound something like a Serbian accent though I'm not fully set on this. Count Vertigo has a fairly deep voice.

 

[King crimson]

Sorry this probably isn't what people were expecting. That being said I had a ton of fun writing it so I'm not too sorry for doing it. The interludes people bought with EXP will be coming soon.

Hypothetical DC Hero shooter idea
Introduction
So this was meant to be a low effort for fun post, then I had too much fun and it ballooned to being a massive conversation about a hypothetical game that will never exist. With Marvel Rivals coming out and having a really good launch, I saw some people online talking about a hypothetical DC hero shooter. I figured it would be fun to throw in my ideas on what a good hypothetical DC hero shooter might look like.

I do want to say a few things as qualification before jumping into the explanation of things. Firstly, I don't actually think a DC hero shooter would be a good idea in reality. I think it's a cool idea and a fun hypothetical to talk about, but I think that any actual DC hero shooter would inevitably draw comparisons to Marvel Rivals and would heavily struggle to differentiate itself in any way beyond its roster. Additionally, Warner Bros Games is notoriously a pretty terrible developer and they would likely ruin the game in some capacity.

The second qualifier is that I'm not a game designer by trade. This quest is the closest thing I do to game design, and I definitely have thoughts and opinions about game design, but doing things casually is a world of difference from doing things professionally. I also don't really play hero shooters so I'm in no way qualified to actually make a good hero shooter video game. I'm going to mostly be ignoring numbers in order to smooth over this aspect, but there's still a chance that I might discuss a hypothetical character who would be a balance nightmare. I'm also not really going to be engaging with with monetization or visuals or voice acting, which are all important to a video game, but I don't feel I have much interesting to say. If other people want to build on this and talk about it, feel free to do so, just know that I don't feel like I have much to add here.

Starting Assumptions
So building off of my earlier qualifier, I'm going to mostly be designing characters for feel rather than balance. I am going to broadly try and fit characters into three archetypical roles, Damage, Tanks, and Support. Damage is meant to kill the enemy team, Tanks are meant to take a lot of punishment and keep enemy damage dealers away, and Support are meant to work in conjunction with another player on your team. These roles will not be iron-clad (a Tank could have a Support or Damage focused ability and vice versa) but they are the broad archetype of how I figure characters would play.

In addition I will be assuming that generally speaking maps will be large and have both open and unopen spaces. Mobility is going to be a large part of this game and there are a number of characters who can fly. As such tight cramped maps without a lot of places to move will be heavily punishing for those characters. At the same time there do need to be tight spaces in the map to facilitate characters who benefit from being able to interact with walls and such. There will be destructible elements in the environment to enable for the map to change depending on how players interact with it, though destructible elements will eventually respawn.

Broadly speaking in designing characters I'm going to give them a primary and a secondary weapon, three normal abilities and an ultimate ability. This is an arbitrary limitation and I think characters could benefit from passive abilities, but I think it works quicker for quickly designing characters as a baseline for a hypothetical discussion. Additionally when designing characters, some characters will have an extra form of mobility like flight or wall climbing or wall clinging in their kit that isn't an ability. Lastly while characters could have interactions both with enemies and allies that affect gameplay in small ways (all members of the Titans move faster when together, Lex deals extra damage to Superman with "kryptonite based attacks" etc.), with the huge roster I have coming up with all the relevant combinations would be too long so I have elected not to include them.

With the gameplay itself I figure it might be fun to have three modes, the two more standard "push a cart to a checkpoint" and "try to hold bases for as long as possible" I think are solid enough on their own, but in this hypothetical I think something like Smite's Arena mode, where you try to defend or clear waves of "creeps" (a term for generic weak non-playable characters that regularly spawn) to either protect your base or deal damage to the enemy's. I think that would be an interesting and engaging game mode though it would require maps with pretty distinct "lanes" for the creeps to consistently move through. Additionally because the Justice League is composed of seven members typically, and because I think it's unique, I think it might be fun to make the game 7 versus 7. I have no idea how realistic this is, or if it's a good idea, but I think it's fun.

The Roster
So before jumping into the roster I'm going to give my broad criteria around how I selected the roster. I already mentioned the three classes and I broadly tried to make sure that I gave at least 12 of each class so that everyone has options to play with. I broadly picked characters in three waves "The Icons" which are the characters I felt were really iconic to the point not including them would feel weird, "Second Round Drafts" who were characters who were generally well known if not necessarily hugely mainstream, and then finally "the Wildcards" which are characters that I believed the general public was not exposed to. With every round I had a larger and larger pool to pick from. When picking, I also attempted to prioritize picking characters that would feel different and fulfill different gameplay niches. One of the reasons why there are very few sidekick characters in this roster is because a lot of them would likely end up feeling very similar to another hero and so I choose someone who could be a little more unique. I also tried to keep it so that there was a roughly even balance of heroes and villains in the roster and I tried to make the roster decently diverse.

Something to note is that there are no true speedsters in this roster. It might be a shortcoming of my imagination, but I couldn't find a way to design someone like the Flash to function in a hero shooter game without either making them feel arbitrarily limited and stunted, or making them absolute hell to play against. As such there are no speedsters.

Lastly with every character, I tried to give them an alternate costume or two. Generally speaking, while you could use costumes to say fit John Stewart, Hal Jordan and every other Green Lantern with a male human body shape into the roster, I thought it would be more interesting to keep the costumes as costumes and not outright alternate characters who could potentially fill a roster slot later down the line.

Icons
Superman

• So Superman kind of earned his spot by virtue of basically being the DC superhero. I'll confirm that this is Kal-El/Clark Kent and I imagine that his role would be that of a tank, with a focus on disrupting the opponents and taking down potential threats. He's meant to feed into the thematic fantasy of being a protector and also being able to cut loose and suddenly be the strongest person on the field. Superman has a high health-pool (to take a lot of damage) and a slow base movements speed. While he has decent tools for a lot of situations and can be mobile, he's generally at his best right on top of the enemy, disrupting them and forcing the enemy team to deal with him. Superman doesn't have a lot of ways to directly defend allies so he needs to rely on his crowd control being disruptive and annoying enough that the enemy chooses to focus him and thus enables him to protect his teammates by fighting on the frontlines. His ultimate ability is meant to feed into the fantasy of him cutting loose and inherently creates a darkest moment (being down a teammate for a while potentially) and a moment of hope where he can potentially turn the tide. It's also very closely tied to his health so as to cripple the ability if it's used preemptively when Superman is undamaged instead of in the middle of a fight.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Superman can freely fly
• Primary Weapon: Superman's primary weapon are his fists. These are melee and do not deal a lot of damage but don't ever need to reload and have a decent rate of attack.
• Secondary Weapon: Superman's secondary weapon is a quick burst of his heat vision. This is long range and does decent damage, but has an incredibly slow rate of fire. It's main purpose in his kit is to be used as a threat to finish off low health targets to force enemies to deal with Superman.
• Ability 1-Freeze Breath: Superman lets out a cone of his freeze breath. This does no damage but freezes all enemies in contact for a relatively short duration. Superman can move while using this ability and airborne enemies who are frozen drop out of the air. This ability has a medium length cooldown.
• Ability 2-Faster than a Speeding Bullet: Superman uses his superspeed to dash in a straight line. This ability has no range limits but the longer you travel with it, the longer the cooldown on it is. As such while it can have a very short cooldown, it also can have one of the longest cooldowns in the game. This ability can be cancelled by moving attacking or using another ability. If Superman collides with a destructible object, he punches and instantly destroys it. If he collides with a grounded opponent (including someone wall-clinging or wall-climbing) he knocks them up into the air, if he collides with an aerial opponent, he knocks them down. This ability has decent damage
• Ability 3-More Powerful than a Locomotive: Superman lets out a seismic clap that generates a shockwave. This shockwave deals decent damage and knocks back enemies it hits.
• Ultimate-World of Cardboard: Superman leaves the battlefield for a few seconds flying into outerspace to charge up by a yellow sun and heal back to full health. The lower his health is the longer this takes. Than Superman flies back into the fray fully empowered. In this empowered state, his primary weapon instantly destroys destructible objects, deals moderate damage and knocks back all enemies hit, his secondary weapon of heat vision is converted into an outright beam (though he can't move and aim), his Freeze Breath has no cooldown, Faster than a Speeding Bullet has no cooldown and deals massive damage, More Powerful than a Locomotive has a very low cooldown and his base movement speed is increased. The empowered state of this ability lasts longer the more time he spent charging in space.
• Costumes
  • Clark Kent
  • Red Son Superman

Batman

• So Batman gets this spot by virtue of being the most popular DC hero. Batman here is Bruce Wayne and his role is damage, with a focus on picking off weakened foes and sowing confusion and terror in the enemy team. Batman has a low health pool but relatively fast base move-speed. He's got solid mobility tools and in general he's meant to feed into the thematic fantasy of being stealth and using ambushes and tactics to take out key foes. He lacks any good long rang tools but he's got tools that let him get in close and take out targets before vanishing once again. A good Batman player should make the enemy team constantly be way that he's about to drop down on them.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Batman can cling to walls and can glide in the air at a decent speed. Any use of abilities will instantly cancel both the wall-cling and the glide and any attack will cancel the glide.
• Primary Weapon: Batman's primary weapons are his batarangs. These have a decent rate of fire and do decent damage but also are midrange at best.
• Secondary Weapon: Batman's secondary weapons is martial arts. This is relatively high damage and has a medium rate of fire, making Batman fairly dangerous when he's right on top of someone. It is short range however.
• Ability 1-Grapple Gun: Batman pulls out his grapple gun and fires it in a set direction, upon connecting with a solid object or an enemy, Batman is swiftly pulled to be right on top of what he hit. This ability has long but not incredibly range. This ability does not have a traditional cooldown and instead works on a "charge" system. Batman can have up to three charges of this ability. So long as he has a charge, Batman can instantly use this ability without waiting, however the charges take a while to build back up meaning he can move with incredible bursts of acrobatics and speed but once he's out of charges he is out of movement options besides the universal ones. This ability can immediately transition into wall-clings and glides and can be cancelled with any ability or attack. Momentum is retained if this ability is cancelled.
• Ability 2-Vanish into the Night: Batman throws down a smoke bomb that covers a small area for a short duration. Enemies in this smoke have their vision obscured and cannot see Batman or his teammates so long as they remain in the smoke. This smoke cannot be seen into from the outside but covers a small area. Batman gains invisibility for a short time upon leaving the smoke cloud but instantly loses it if he attacks or uses an ability. Use of Grapple Gun within the smoke will allow Batman to remain invisible upon exiting. This ability has a high cooldown.
• Ability 3-Concussive Grenade: Batman throws a concussive grenade that deals light damage and stuns a single target if it connects. This ability has a decent amount of range but is lobbed and can only affect one target.
• Ultimate-Caped Crusader: Batman dashes forwards a short distance, locking down an opponent and pummeling them with a rapid series of high damage blows. If this ability kills its cooldown is instantly reset. This ability has a fairly high cooldown even for an ultimate ability.
• Costumes:
  • Batman Zur-en-Arrh
  • Adam West Batman

Wonder Woman

• Wonder Woman completes the trinity of the most iconic DC comics characters. Wonder Woman is Diana Prince and is meant to fulfill the thematic fantasy of being a defender in a different way than Superman. Diana directly shields her allies and can make picks and plays that are a little more cooperative in nature. Where Superman rushes ahead to fight foes to save the day, Diana stands before her allies and protects. Diana does not have a lot of range but she has ways of getting in close. She has decent health but is on the lower end for a tank. In exchange for this she has good base movement speed and a fair amount of damage.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Diana can fly when using her secondary weapon
• Primary Weapon: Wonder Woman's primary weapon is her sword and shield. The sword is high damage but is melee range.
• Secondary Weapon: Wonder Woman's secondary weapon is her fists which is relatively lower damage and is melee range. While she is using this weapon Diana can fly freely. Switching weapons while in the air will cause Wonder woman to divebomb with a devastating high damage attack.
• Ability 1-Aegis of Protection: While Wonder Woman is using her primary weapon, she pulls out a shield with high health that is magically expanded to cover a wide area. While this shield remains unbroken there is no cooldown to pulling it out. While the shield is out, Wonder Woman has slower movement. If the shield is broken there will be a high cooldown for pulling it out again. This ability can be canceled and the shield is stowed only if it is recast or the shield is broken. While using her secondary weapon, Diana will enter a stance where she can use her bracelets of protection to deflect all incoming projectiles from her front. This ability can be cancelled early to get a shorter cooldown and can be used while moving. Normally the version of this while using her secondary weapon has a long cooldown.
• Ability 2-Lasso of Truth: Diana throws out her Lasso of Truth. If it connects with an opponent, they are pulled directly on top of her. This ability has a mid-length cooldown.
• Ability 3-Rallying Cry: Wonder Woman inspires her allies and grants all allies and herself a minor heal and damage boost.
• Ultimate-Amazon Assault: Wonder Woman leaps high up into the air. From there she can select a target to come crashing down. This ability has a large circular area of effect when Wonder Woman strikes the ground and all grounded enemies in this area take heavy damage and are knocked up. If Wonder Woman uses this while in the air, she will move to the set height she would be at the apex of her leap. This ability has a decent cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Themysciran Toga
  • Absolute Wonder Woman

Green Lantern/John Stewart

• Of all the Green Lanterns I ultimately went with John Stewart. His role in the DCAU makes him fairly recognizable and I feel like his US Marine Corps background can help give a bit of flavor to a shooter that a lot of other heroes don't really bring. Green Lantern is meant to fulfill the thematic fantasy of being a sort of battlefield tactician. He's the man with the plan and through coordination with his allies, John Stewart can take control of the battlefield and lead them to victory. On his own he's not the most capable, but with a few teammates on his side he can easily turn the tide of battle. He has an average health pool and average mobility, but he's also got a lot of tools to operate from range.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Green Lantern can fly freely
• Primary Weapon: Green Lantern's primary weapon is blasts of his Green Lantern Ring. This has a relatively slow rate of fire and low damage but can hit from long ranges. It can be charged for a larger projectile that deals more damage. It also never needs to reload.
• Secondary Weapon: Green Lantern's secondary weapon is a massive construct chain gun. Green Lantern's movement speed while using this weapon is incredibly slow. It has an incredibly fast rate of fire, can hit opponents from long range, and deal high damage but it also takes a very long time to reload.
• Ability 1-Emerald Wall: Green Lantern creates a construct of a wall that can block projectiles and block of areas. The wall will be destroyed after it takes enough damage. This ability has a decently long cooldown.
• Ability 2-Oan Armor: Green Lantern creates a construct of armor around an ally, granting them additional defenses. The construct shatters once the armor/additional hit points are depleted. This ability has a relatively low cooldown.
• Ability 3-Last Resort: Green Lantern creates a construct of a baton or baseball bat that swings in a close range arc in front of him. All enemies struck by this ability are knocked back a significant but not incredible distance
• Ultimate-Construct Barrage: Green Lantern targets a set area and launches a massive barrage of construct missiles to bombard the area. Green Lantern cannot cancel this ability and hangs in a fixed place in the air when using it.
• Costumes:
  • Alpha Lantern
  • Marine Fatigues

Aquaman

• Aquaman is both a fairly well known hero and a common member of the Justice League. Furthermore his elemental powers give a good amount of design space that can be filled creatively. He's also got the ability to lean in a bit more to a fantasy or barbarian type of look that might be fun for this kind of game and give a bit of variance in terms of armor. For a thematic fantasy, it was a bit tricky, and it resulted in Aquaman stepping on a lot of other potential Atlanteans toes, but I think leaning into a sort of hydromancer vibe and letting him throw around big AOE water attacks would be fun and make him feel very different from the other characters. Aquaman would have an average health-pool and high movement speed and in this incarnation is Arthur Curry.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Aquaman has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Aquaman's primary weapon is blasts of water he can shoot out of his trident for medium range and high damage attacks. It has a slow rate of fire but doesn't need to reload ever
• Secondary Weapon: Aquaman's secondary weapon is his trident. This is melee but strikes quickly and for does high damage.
• Ability 1-Whirlpool: Aquaman creates a whirlpool in a small area that deals damage over time and drags enemies towards its center. This ability has a high cooldown
• Ability 2-Seven Seas Strike: Aquaman leaps into the air and then comes down with a watery splash, dealing damage to all caught in the area of effect. This ability has a high cooldown
• Ability 3-Riptide: Aquaman creates a series of waves that deal moderate damage and drag enemies towards it. This ability can be easily escapde by moving to the sides as it is relatively thin and has more length than width.
• Ultimate-King of Atlantis: Aquaman unleashes a massive tidal wave that surges from where he was, knocking back all opponents it strikes and instantly destroying all destructible objects it comes into contact with. This ability can strike opponents multiple times if they do not get out of the way.
• Costumes:
  • Royal Regalia
  • Hook Handed Exile

Zatanna

• Zatanna has admittedly never had a huge breakthrough into the mainstream but I feel like she's always been on the periphery of it. She'd normally be a "Second Round Draft" but her ranged combat and ties to the magic side of DC makes her enough of a lock that it would feel pretty weird to me if a DC hero shooter didn't have her. Zatanna's thematic fantasy was tricky to lock down but I settled on making her fulfill a bit of the traditional healer role in a hero shooter. Is it the most original? No but I do think she can fill the roll better than any other well known character and bring a fun and unique flair to it. She's got a small health-pool and low base movement speed, but Zatanna needs those and the low mobility to compensate for just how effectively she can turn the tides of a fight with a magic word or two.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Zatanna has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Zatanna's primary weapon is a series of magical blasts that come out of her wand. She does occasionally pause to recast the spell but otherwise has no issues with it. This weapon has medium range and does decent damage with an average rate of fire.
• Secondary Weapon: Zatanna's secondary weapon is a spell cast from her wand that is a beam that connects to the nearest enemy to her in a short range. This beam deals damage over time and slows the enemy it hits. Zatanna does need to pause to recast occasionally.
• Ability 1-peelS ot oG: Zatanna casts a spell that launchs a projectile, which if it connects puts an opponent to sleep for a decent length of time, or until the next moment they are damaged. This ability has a moderate cooldown and deals no damage.
• Ability 2-!otserP: Zatanna teleports to a location she aimed at in a moderate range. This ability runs on a charge system and Zatanna can hold up to five charges. There is a minute cooldown between each use and charges take a moderate amount of time to reaccumulate.
• Ability 3-elbuorT elbuoD: Zatanna creates a magical double of herself that pops in with an identical animation to !otserP. She can recast this ability while the double is still around to swap places with the double, once more with an animation identical to !otserP. The double has a set amount of health and will automatically target and attack the nearest visible enemy. While the double is around, if Zatanna casts either peelS ot oG or !eviveR, then the double will also cast the ability. This ability has a very long cooldown but the cooldown doesn't start until the double runs out of health.
• Ultimate-!eviveR: Zatanna revives all allies that have died recently and restores them to full health. If her double remains then she can revive herself as well. This ability has a long cooldown
• Costumes:
  • New 52 costume
  • Justice League Detroit costume

Raven

• Raven is the first character who isn't a member of the Justice League who I felt was iconic enough that she was pretty much a lock for this sort of game. Raven's abilities lend themselves well to this sort of game and she's incredibly popular, I think arguably the most popular of all the Teen Titans. Plus her general aesthetic and thematic is pretty unique from my picks thus far. Raven's thematic is meant to be about carefully managing to walk the line between control and and chaos and coming out on top through that. She has decent base movement speed and has slightly higher than average health. The reason why Raven has slightly higher than average health is because all of her normal abilities build to a "Demon Gauge". If the Demon gauge is filled then Raven will transform into a demon, her health will begin to deplete, and normal abilities will cost a percentage of her health. That being said, in Demon form, Raven's abilities have no cooldown. While in demon form the gauge will naturally deplete. Additionally if Raven does not attack, use and ability or take damage for a decent amount of time then the gauge will deplete. Her ultimate ability Soul Self is meant to encourage people to take some risks with the Demon form and serves as a natural tide turner.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Raven can freely fly
• Primary Weapon: Raven's primary weapon are blasts of dark magic that she can freely launch. This has a moderate rate of fire, do decent damage and works best from mid-range and doesn't need to reload.
• Secondary Weapon: Raven's secondary weapon is a series of arc shaped conjurations of dark magic. Raven regularly needs to recast this and the rate of fire is slow, but they are incredibly damaging, long range and are very large projectiles.
• Ability 1-In the Darkness Bind Them: Raven launches a blast of energy which if it connects stuns an opponent for a decent length of time or until they take damage over a certain threshold. This ability has a decent length cooldown and generates a large amount of the demon gauge.
• Ability 2-Nevermore: Raven launches a magical raven construct the moves forwards. Upon connecting with an enemy or object the Raven detonates, creating an area of effect explosion that deals high damage. The construct moves slower than Raven's primary weapon but faster than her secondary weapon. This ability has a low cooldown and generates a decent amount of the demon gauge
• Ability 3-Unkindness: Raven detonates a shockwave of dark energy that deals high damage to enemies on top of her. The shockwave does not have a very big range but can be charged to go further and deal more damage. This ability has a long cooldown and generates a lot for the demon gauge.
• Ultimate-Soul Self: Raven purges the demonic influence from herself and heals herself back to full. She then enters an empowered state wherein her abilities have no cooldown and don't cost a percentage of her health. The duration Raven is in this empowered state lasts longer the less health she has and if she is in demon form when casting it. This ability has a very long cooldown
• Costumes:
  • 2005 cartoon Raven
  • Casual street clothes

Cyborg

• So Cyborg was another very popular and well known member of the Teen Titans and he notably didn't have any overlap with existing picks as he's got a fun sci-fi vibe and his sonic canon doesn't really have an equivalent. Additionally there's a lot of hypothetical design space that's open for giving Cyborg a unique kit to play around with. Cyborg is meant to feed into this thematic fantasy of being able to blast away from a distance, not necessarily a sniper but more of just one man artillery. He has decent move speed and health but it's mostly because he's very much meant to be backline support rather than front line offense.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Cyborg has a jetpack that can extend his jump upwards for a limited duration or be used to stall in the air
• Primary Weapon: Cyborg's primary weapon is his sonic canon. The sonic canon has a relatively slow rate of fire and occasionally needs to reload but it is highly damaging and launches a fast and power large projectile.
• Secondary Weapon: Cyborg's second weapon is a shoulder based missile launcher. This weapon has a fairly slow rate of fire but causes AOE damage on impact, is high damage and moves very fast. This weapon reloads very slowly when it has to but has good range.
• Ability 1-Aerial Bombardment: Cyborg launches a sonic missile that shoots up and then strikes down in a targeted area, detonating and dealing damage. This ability works off of a charge system and Cyborg can hold up to three charges at any given time, with no cooldown between use. This ability gains charges back fairly quickly though not extremely so
• Ability 2-Repair Bot: Cyborg tosses a bot that heals all allies in a set area very slowly and restores ammo to their weapons were applicable. The ability has a very long cooldown.
• Ability 3-Overclock: Cyborg overclocks his sonic canon launching a projectile that creates a massive explosion on impact and moving himself backwards with the recoil. This ability has an average cooldown and does higher damage the closer someone is to the epicenter of the explosion.
• Ultimate-Full Throttle: Cyborg pulls out all the stops and sends out a massive blue beam of energy that deals massive damage to anything it touches. Cyborg cannot move when using this ability but cannot be interrupted and can turn to aim the beam at different positions in line of sight. This ability has a relatively fast cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • 2005 cartoon costume
  • Original Perez costume

Starfire

• Starfire was the last of the Teen Titans to make it onto the icons round of character selection. She was a bit shaky but she is iconic and she's a lot better of a fit for the genre than Beast Boy (he's difficult to make work without severely crippling his powerset) and has less thematic crossover than Robin (Robin suffers from being really similar to a lot of "cowl" characters who take priority over him). All of the Titans thus far fill the damage role and Starfire's no different. Starfire is meant to be a relatively aggressive character, going in and getting a kill or racking up damage. She's got average health and very high base movement speed, as this should give her a weakness if she tries to do everything on her own, while also encouraging her to be aggressive and make use of her speed to avoid damage when possible.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Starfire can fly freely
• Primary Weapon: Starfire's primary weapons are her starbolts, which are a midrange projectile that do decent damage and are fired at a moderate pace. Starfire does not ever have to reload and the starbolts are decently sized.
• Secondary Weapon: Starfire's secondary weapon is her fists. These are melee ranged but Starfire's attacks do high damage and come out fairly quickly. Oftentimes when she's right on top of someone she can pummel them to death fairly effectively.
• Ability 1-Starbolt Barrage: Starfire flings a flurry of starbolts at a very fast pace. This ability can be held to increase the duration but doing so also increases the cooldown. This ability can be used while moving and can deal very high damage if all of the starbolts connect. This ability normally has a low cooldown.
• Ability 2-X'Hal's Fury: Starfire heals a small amount of health and sets her self ablaze. Attacks with her primary and secondary weapons as well as Starbolt Barrage and Tamaranean Might now deal minor amounts damage over time in addition to their base damage for a while. This ability has an average cooldown
• Ability 3-Tamaranean Might: Starfire dashes forwards taking reduced damage. If she connects with an enemy she knocks them up into the air, setting them up for further attacks. This ability has a slightly above average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Fire and Fury: Starfire grabs an enemy in melee range and picks them up into the sky before slamming them down into the ground, generating a shockwave. The slam deals massive damage to the target while the shockwave deals minute damage, knocks back enemies hit and deals small amounts of damage over time.
• Costumes:
  • New Teen Titans costume
  • Queen of Tamaran outfit

Green Arrow

• Green Arrow has always been pretty well known, showing up in two live-action TV shows (Smallville, and Arrow) and a ton of animated shows (He was incredibly prominent in the DCAU, and in Batman the Brave and the Bold and had prominent roles in Young Justice and The Batman). He's kind of a big deal. Add onto that the fact that he's the bow and arrow guy, and he makes an incredible amount of sense for a DC hero shooter. Green Arrow is very specifically meant to fulfill a sharpshooter thematic and make work well at long range. He's relatively slow and has a very low health-pool but this is to compensate for very high damage output.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Green Arrow has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Green Arrow's primary weapon is his bow and arrow. This is very long range and very high damage but has an incredibly low rate of fire and takes a fairly long time to reload. The attack can be held to extend the distance and damage.
• Secondary Weapon: Green Arrows secondary weapon is to attempt to use his fists in melee range. This is very low damage and is not especially fast to compensate for his incredibly high long range damage potential.
• Ability 1-Boxing-Glove Arrow: In exchange for reducing the damage on his next shot Green Arrow's next shot now knocks back enemies if it connects. This ability works on a charge system and Green Arrow can have up to seven charges. The charges build up at a moderate pace, but there is a significant if short cooldown between uses of this ability.
• Ability 2-Hookshot: Green Arrow fires a hookshot that sets up a zipline he can go up and down on. Green Arrow can fire while on the zipline but any attempt to move besides the automated movement will result in the ability cancelling and Green Arrow jumping off the zipline in that direction.
• Ability 3-Bolo Arrow: In exchange for removing the damage on his next shot, Green Arrow's next shot now roots any opponent it connects with in place. This ability works on a charge system and Green Arrow can have up to three charges. The charges build up at a slow rate and there is a significant if short cooldown between uses of this ability.
• Ultimate-Eye for Archery: Enemies around Green Arrow will now leave a trail of after images behind themselves, Green Arrow can shoot these afterimages to deal damage to the enemy in question.
• Costumes:
  • Brave and the Bold outfit
  • Shipwrecked on an island

Lex Luthor

• Lex Luthor gets his spot by virtue of being the most iconic Superman villain and one of the ones that's easiest to translate into this sort of game without covering other characters thematic niches and doing his own thing. Lex Luthor's big warsuits are only one side of the character but they do translate to the situation well and since I have him in the tank role, naturally increasing the size of his body serves as a good visual indicator of "this is a tank and has a lot of health". Lex Luthor's specific thematic fantasy is going to be centered around setting up and controlling an area, having a masterplan and developing tricks and traps to ensure that when your enemies blunder into the area, you'll be able to fully take advantage of it and destroy them with your plan. Lex Luthor has decent health for a tank and good base move-speed.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Lex Luthor has a jetpack that can be used to extend his jump upwards or be used to stall his descent in the air.
• Primary Weapon: Lex's primary weapon is a an over the shoulder canon when launches high damage kryptonite blasts. It has a very slow rate of fire but very long range and takes a long time to reload.
• Secondary Weapon: Lex's secondary weapon is to use the fists of his mechasuit. This does low damage and is melee range, but it has a moderate rate of attack and will never need to reload.
• Ability 1-LexCorp Defense Matrix: Lex Luthor plants a spike that creates a forcefield in a set radius. All projectiles going into the forcefield are instantly destroyed, while projectiles going out can pass through just fine. The spike has low health and cannot take much damage before breaking and enemies can freely move through the forcefield. This ability has a very high cooldown.
• Ability 2-Kryptonite Mine: Lex plants a small kryptonite based mine on a solid object. Upon an enemy getting close to it, the mine detonates, dealing significant damage to any enemies caught in the explosion. This ability has a low cooldown but there is a limit to how many he can have out at any given time. The mines can be destroyed by attacking them.
• Ability 3-Defense Drone: Lex launches a drone that follows a preprogramed flight route. The route can be selected from a set of simple options (back and forth, in a circle, up and down, randomly within a set zone, and remaining in place) by hitting the button for the ability again to cycle through the available options before firing/using the ability. This drone will then attack the nearest visible enemy in its range, switching targets as someone else draws nearer. The drones do not have a lot of health but are not huge targets either and move at a decent speed. This ability has a low cooldown but Lex has a limit to how many drones he can create at any given time.
• Ultimate-Final Contingency: Lex Luthor enacts his last ditch attempt at killing his foes, causing his suit to gain a massive amount of armor, his primary weapon to turn into a kryptonite beam that does not need to reload, his secondary weapon gains speed and damage, and his suit begins to rapidly and randomly spawn drones and mines without counting to the limit of how many he can have at any given time. This ability has a long cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Superman Armor
  • Entropy Aegis

Joker

• So the Joker is probably the most iconic Batman villain. I'm not the biggest fan at times but one cannot deny that he's popular and well known as he's pretty much the only DC villain ever to get two movies dedicated just to them. He's a huge deal and with his use of guns, he naturally could fit into a hero shooter very well. For me the design was ultimately a toss up of if to make him a damage character or a support. Ultimately damage characters were common enough that I felt like it would be better for the roster if he became a support. The Joker's thematic fantasy is that he's an asshole. He's a support, but less in the sense that he's directly aiding them and more that he's messing with and crippling the enemy team in ways that make them weaker and easier to pick off later down the line. He's got weird gadgets and tricks to make the enemy team incredibly frustrated at him. He's got average health but surprisingly good base move speed to make him a real menace if you aren't keeping track of him.
• Role: Support
• Movement: The Joker can pull out a balloon to slowly glide through the air. The balloon can be popped by attacking it and doing so causes the Joker to immediately begin falling.
• Primary Weapon: The Joker's primary weapon is a revolver. Joker can hold the fire button to fire a bang flag that does no damage and then fire again to shoot said flag like a spear to deal a lot of damage. This weapon has a slow rate of fire and takes a while to reload. It can deal a lot of damage but it deliberately requires you to fire even slower than normal
• Secondary Weapon: The Joker's secondary weapon is his "fun-chucks" a pair of rubber chickens tied to one another. These deal decent damage, never need to reload and have a moderate speed but are melee range only.
• Ability 1-Smiling Snap-Trap: The Joker places down a bear trap shaped like a grin. Enemies cannot see this trap and if they walk over it, they will take damage and be rooted in place for a while. This ability has a long cooldown and there is a maximum number of traps that can be placed at once.
• Ability 2-Nifty Clodhoppers: The Joker's shoes turn into springs and he bounces high up into the air, with the Joker able to affect the arc of the jump. This ability does no damage and has a relatively average cooldown. It's primarily meant to be a mobility tool that allows him to move and escape in unpredictable ways.
• Ability 3-The Banana-Cream Classic: The Joker throws a banana cream pie. If it connects with an enemy they take a minute amount of damage and are blinded for a short period of time. This ability has a relatively low cooldown.
• Ultimate-It's a Gas!: The Joker unleashes a massive cloud of laughing gas in a set area around him. Any enemies caught in the cloud are rendered unable to move or attack for a short while as they laugh uncontrollably. All those outside the cloud cannot see in the cloud. This ability has a relatively low cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Killing Joke Outfit
  • White Suit from the Dark Knight Returns

Harley Quinn

• Harley Quinn is a big money maker no matter how you want to slice it as she's been consistently a very popular character for decades now. With her own use of guns she naturally fits into this kind of shooter. Harley is meant to fulfill the thematic fantasy of being able to run around fast and blow things up. She's not got a super intricate plan or complicated but she's fast and acrobatic and can do damage. She's got a small health-pool but very fast base move-speed and is designed to be able to pretty easily go off on her own and wreak havoc without losing too much.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Harley Quinn can double-jump, wall-cling and wall-jump. Wall-jumping resets her double-jump, allowing her to do so again.
• Primary Weapon: Harley's primary weapon is her "pop-gun" and oversized pistol that fires exploding corks in an arc. It reloads relatively quickly and can do high damage and has AOE damage due to the small explosions, but it has a decently slow rate of fire and cannot hit opponents high up enough in the air.
• Secondary Weapon: Harley's secondary is her mallet. This has decent range for a melee option, covering an arc in front of her and is very high damage without ever needing to reload but the rate of fire is fairly slow.
• Ability 1-The Big One: Harley Harley pulls out a bazooka and after a bit of wind-up fires a high damage missile at a target. This missile explodes upon impact with any surface. This ability has a fairly substantial cooldown.
• Ability 2-Exploding Gumballs: Harley tosses a set of explosive gumballs which deal a decent amount of damage and slow down any opponent they hit. This ability has a moderate cooldown.
• Ability 3-Fore!: Harley hits an opponent launching them high up into the air and dealing massive damage. This ability does not work in the air but has a relatively average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Bud and Lou: Harley unleashes her hyenas which go on a rampage moving in a straight line and bouncing off any walls/obstacles that would keep them from continuing to move forwards. Any enemies hit by this get dragged by the hyenas.
• Costumes:
  • Classic DCAU costume
  • Dr. Harleen Quinzel

Circe

• So I felt that an icon needed for this game was a Wonder Woman villain to fit the clear "evil counterpart" that was sort of built up with other entries. I initially considered Ares and Cheetah for the role and while both could work, it became clear to me that while both could work, they both had significant issues (Cheetah has issues finding a primary and secondary weapon, while Ares struggles to get abilities that emphasize his godly abilities without just making him into "weapons man"). Circe works and can fill a slightly more aggressive support role that still offers some healing. The thematic fantasy she's meant to evoke is the feeling of sort of being in control and constantly being able to empower allies and reduce your enemies to nothing at the same time.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Circe can fly freely
• Primary Weapon: Circe shoots blasts of magic that deal decent amounts of damage and have a decent rate of fire. Circe does not ever need to reload and the blasts are about mid-range at best.
• Secondary Weapon: Circe fires a beam of magic that does no damage but will bend and attempt to connect to an in-range ally, prioritzing whoever is closest to where she initially aims and empower them to do extra damage and move a little faster. This ability is mid-range as well and has no need to reload.
• Ability 1-Blessing of the Sun: Circe launches an orb that slowly moves forwards and heals all allies in its moderate range. This orb can be destroyed by enemy attacks and has a longer than average cooldown.
• Ability 2-Witch Queen's Domain: Circe places runes upon the floor in a large circular radius that speed up and empower enemies while also slowing down enemies. This ability has a long cooldown and a decent range.
• Ability 3-Form of a Friend: Circe casts an illusion disguising herself as any enemy she chooses to appear as. Using any abilities or attacking instantly ends the illusion revealing Circe's true form. This ability has a low cooldown.
• Ultimate-The True Self Revealed: Circe can transform an enemy into a Beastiamorph. The Beastiamorph will immediately move to attack any nearby enemies with melee attacks. If no enemies are present then the Beastiamorph will stand still and do nothing. The transformation will wear off after a short while, though healing can extend the duration of the transformation. Circe and her allies can target and kill the Bestiamorph. This ability has an incredibly long cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • DCAU Design
  • New 52 costume

Sinestro

• So Sinestro's a character where I had enough flexibility that I felt I could fit him in any role. He also is pretty much the most iconic Green Lantern villain and I did feel like he's a good pick to fill out the villain roster while staying away from being too similar. It was a struggle to differentiate him from Green Lantern, but I think I managed to do so while still keeping the history Sinestro has with the Corps present in his kit. Sinestro has lower than average health and higher than average move-speed. His thematic fantasy is meant to be inspiring terror and using his constructs to keep his team in control while the enemy runs scared and through the use of his abilities he'll hopefully do that.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Sinestro can fly freely
• Primary Weapon: Sinestro fires blasts from his yellow power ring. These do decent damage, have a slower rate of fire and can go decently far. Sinestro can charge his shots to do more damage and fire a bigger blast.
• Secondary Weapon: Sinestro launches sharp bladed constructs. The constructs do a good amount of damage but cannot hit very far and have a very long reload animation after only a few shots.
• Ability 1-Golden Guillotine: Sinestro creates a mark on the ground. If an enemy steps on the mark, a giant golden blade drops from the sky. If this blade connects it deals a large amount of damage. This ability has a relatively low cooldown but Sinestro has a limit to how many marks he can place.
• Ability 2-Motivating Terror: Sinestro gives a speech and a yellow aura around him is projected for a fair distance. Allies within this aura gain a damage boost which is further increased the less health they have. Sinestro cannot cancel this ability and is only able to move and attack while it is ongoing. This ability has an above average length cooldown.
• Ability 3-Monster Made Manifest: Sinestro creates a construct of a huge monster that will attack any enemies who get close to it. The monster is stationary but will provide a slight damage boost to all allies who get close enough to it. This ability has a very long cooldown
• Ultimate-Sinestro's Might: Sinestro calls down a massive blast of yellow light via Ranx and any enemies caught in it take damage and are rooted in place while they are in it. Any airborne enemies caught by the beam are knocked to the ground. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Qwardian Black and Blue suit
  • White Lantern Sinestro

Black Manta

• Black Manta is a character who felt a little shaky placing him in this round. I think he's pretty well known after having been a villain in two relatively large live action movies, and he's never lacked in appearances in other media. He's got a good look and he's one of the most iconic Aquaman villains. The thing that settled it for me was him being pretty different from a lot of other Aquaman villains. As for his thematic fantasy Black Manta is meant to be a straightforward, slightly edgy character who mixes in straightforward gameplay centered on dealing damage with aggression that can benefit a lot from coordinated teamplay. He has high health and low move-speed and often times will struggle if he's not given support of some kind.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Black Manta has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Black Manta uses a massive beam that he fires out of the eyes of his helmet. This beam does not need to reload but while firing it Black Manta is slowed and cannot turn quickly. This beam does very high damage, but often struggles with keeping up with more mobile characters and disperses after about mid range.
• Secondary Weapon: Black Manta makes use of wrist-mounted dart guns to fire at his enemy. These are short range and do relatively low damage but they have a high rate of fire, reload relatively quickly, and can cover decent areas with a fast rate of fire.
• Ability 1-Manta's Sting: An electrifying melee strike where Black Manta hits an opponent with an electrified gauntlet. The enemy that if hit by this ability is stunned for a decent length of time. This ability deals a fair bit of damage and has a low cooldown.
• Ability 2-Can't Keep a Good Manta Down: Black Manta injects himself with stimulants, restoring some of his health. This ability has a long cooldown.
• Ability 3-Sonar Seeker: Black Manta fires a spike which detonates and "pings" in a sonar sense, letting him spot enemies behind walls. This ability has a relatively low cooldown and can do damage but only has a middling range.
• Ultimate-Bottomless Wrath: Black Manta calls in submarine support and has his sub carpet bomb a nearby area, repeatedly launching wave after wave of explosions. This ability can strike any part of the map at any given time.
• Costumes:
  • Devil Ray
  • Atlantean conqueror

Second Round Drafts
Red Hood

• So Red Hood wins a spot by virtue of being really popular and meshing well with shooter style gameplay. He's got a solid arsenal of guns and gadgets and unlike a lot of Robins, Red Hood/Jason Todd has a few things that can heavily differentiate him from Batman. As for the thematic fantasy he's meant to fill, Red Hood is meant to be a nimble and acrobatic fighter, good at flanking and if things go his way, mowing down everyone in his way. His health-pool and base move-speed are meant to be average as he's fairly straightforward and simple but the right use of his abilities can leverage him into a unique position.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Red Hood can double-jump, wall-cling, and wall-jump. Wall-jumping resets his double-jump, allowing him to do so again.
• Primary Weapon: Red Hood uses a pair of pistols to blast at opponents. These have a decent rate of fire and are generally best in the mid or close range. They can deal a solid amount of damage and reload quickly but frequently.
• Secondary Weapon: Red Hood uses a knife to slash those directly in front of him. This is a fast high damage attack but is entirely melee range.
• Ability 1-Calling Card: Red Hood hurls a series of explosives a fair distance away from him. Any enemies marked by this ability take additional damage from Red Hood for a few seconds. This ability deals low damage but also has a short cooldown
• Ability 2-Vanishing Act: Red Hood turns invisible for a short duration. Attacking or using another ability ends the invisibility immediately. This ability has a high cooldown and deals no damage.
• Ability 3-Eat Lead!: Red Hood whips out a shotgun and uses it to blast directly in front of him. This ability covers a wide range in front of him. This ability knocks back enemies it hits a short distance and can deal very high damage if the enemy is directly on top of him. This ability has a fairly low cooldown and marks enemies it hits. Marked enemies take additional damage from Red Hood for a short duration.
• Ultimate-Mask of the Red Death: Red Hood begins whirling around, blasting enemies with his pistols and dealing high damage to all enemies in a set area. This is very high damage but also has a loud tell so people can immediately notice when it is used. Red Hood can be killed and crowd controlled while this ability is being used. This ability has a relatively short cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Robin Costume
  • Red Komuso

Deadshot

• Deadshot earns his spot by virtue of both being fairly well known and popular but also filling in a really critical gameplay niche, namely being a sniper. It was actually a toss-up between him and Deathstroke (I feel like there can be a lot of overlap between the two) and Deadshot won despite being less popular, by virtue of filling in an incredibly necessary gameplay niche. To kind of build on that Deadshot has very low health and base move-speed. This is to compensate for the fact that as part of his thematic fantasy of being the greatest sniper who can make any shot, he has incredible range and high damage capabilities. A good Deadshot could pick people off across the map if people aren't careful.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Deadshot has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Deadshot makes use of a very high caliber custom sniper rifle. The scope can zoom in multiple times to hone in on a target potentially across the entire map. This weapon reloads after every shot and takes a while to do so, leading to an incredibly slow rate of fire, but it also has the highest range potential in the game and deals good damage, especially on headshots.
• Secondary Weapon: Deadshot's secondary weapon are his gauntlet mounted machine guns. They take a little bit to start up but once they do they fire rapidly and can deal massive damage assuming all of the shots connect with the target. These weapons are only really able to hit close range targets.
• Ability 1-Trickshot: Deadshot's next shot with his sniper rifle will bounce off of every solid object it encounters for a short while before disappearing after a set duration or a set number of bounces. Enemies can be hit multiple times by a bouncing shot if they are not careful. This ability has a low cooldown
• Ability 2-Jumppack: Deadshot uses a jetpack as part of his gear to jump high into the air, allowing him to land atop structures and vantage points. The jump will always reach the same height and there's a second of startup for this, making it an inefficient escape tool. This ability deals no damage and has a higher than average cooldown.
• Ability 3-Killer's Instinct: Deadshot taps into his senses and intuition to figure out where the enemy team is, getting a marker that shows the direction of the enemies when the ability was cast. Deadshot cannot fire while this ability is in use and there's enough time for enemies to move away from the marker, with further enemies having an easier time of doing so. This ability has a very low cooldown to the point where it's spammable, but it also deals no damage.
• Ultimate-Final Round: Deadshot fires a shot that deals massive damage to all enemies it hits. It's a very small projectile however and solid, non-destructible objects will stop it. This projectile does instantly destroy all destructible objects it comes into contact with. This ability has an average cooldown
• Costumes:
  • Original Deadshot costume
  • Prison garb

Peacemaker

• Peacemaker is another character who gets onto the roster by virtue of being fairly popular and well-known but also just fitting into the game really well. "Buff guy with guns" isn't an especially unique thing, but I kind of don't have anyone filling that role and while there are characters like Bloodsport I could have chosen instead, Peacemaker felt like a good "popularity pick" that filled the gameplay role I was looking for. As for his thematic fantasy, he's meant to be the fairly straightforward character with average health and base move-speed that plays more akin to a typical shooter. He's not completely bereft of anything but he's very much meant to be a "comfort character" that leans into a more traditional shooter game style.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Peacemaker has no unique movement options.
• Primary Weapon: Peacemaker attacks with a machine gun, firing swiftly and having a decent amount of ammo but occasionally needing to reload. It's meant to function very akin to common guns in traditional shooters and generally deals low damage with each shot but can deal a lot of damage with sustained fire. This gun is best used in the mid-range
• Secondary Weapon: Peacemaker uses his specialized pistol. This pistol has a slow rate of fire and a relatively small amount of shots before it need to reload. It's best in close range but also does high amounts of damage.
• Ability 1-Freedom's Cry!: Peacemaker calls down a bald eagle to fly in a set line. The first enemy hit by the eagle is attacked by it for a short time or until it is killed. The eagle has low health and has decent but not incredible range and deals a good amount of damage. This ability has a moderate cooldown
• Ability 2-Combat Roll: Peacemaker rolls forwards, temporarily decreasing his size and making him harder to hit while moving faster in a set direction. After rolling, Peacemaker refills a set amount of ammo for his weapons. This ability has a fairly low cooldown
• Ability 3-True Dedication: Peacemaker injects himself with a series of chemicals, healing himself for a moderate amount of damage
• Ultimate-Rest in Peace: Peacemaker pulls out a barrage of large guns and armor and goes wild for a short amount of time. While in this state he cannot use any abilities and moves slower but his rate of fire and damage potential is massively raised. That ability has an above average cooldown
• Costumes:
  • Major Victory
  • Tactical Camo

Blue Beetle/Jaime Reyes

• Blue Beetle got the role due to being a not unpopular superhero, and filling a lot of niche's not already present. While he does have some potential overlap with Cyborg, making his suit more sentient and emphasizing the cooperation and more up close elements of his I feel could be fun. I considered going with the Ted Kord version but I felt there was more open design space with Jaime Reyes.Blue Beetle is a law health but very high base move-speed character. His thematic fantasy is meant to be as a sort of high damage single target duelist, where he struggles to deal with enemies working in concert, but he's very good at taking them on all at once.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Blue Beetle can fly freely and can wall-climb.
• Primary Weapon: Blue Beetle morphs his arm into a reach disrupter canon and fires a quick flurry of shots before recharging. These shots individually deal moderate damage but over time can deal a lot more. These shots work best from mid-range and the projectiles are relatively small
• Secondary Weapon: Blue Beetle morphs his arm into a curved blades. He's able to attack at a very fast speed with this and while it is technically melee, it has a deceptively long reach. This can do a lot of damage if allowed to hit multiple times and do not require any reloading.
• Ability 1-Both Hands: Blue Beetle transforms his other hand into a weapon as well, doubling his damage output and increasing the amount of spots he is hitting at any given time. This ability has an incredibly low cooldown to the point where it's borderline spammable.
• Ability 2-Beetle Rush: Blue Beetle transforms his hands into a massive clamp and gains movement speed for a brief duration. If Blue Beetle connects with an opponent, the clamp will deal a significant amount of damage to them and will allow Blue Beetle to drag them for a short while. This ability has a hefty cooldown
• Ability 3-Carapce Lock: Kahji-Da locks down the armor for a short duration, preventing Blue Beetle from attacking or taking any damage. Blue Beetle can move when this ability is active. This ability can cancel or be cancelled into any of Blue Beetles other abilities. This ability has a long cooldown.
• Ultimate-Fight As One: Blue Beetle unleash a torrent of missiles and laser blasts for a set duration and can freely move during this time as well. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Scarlet Scarab
  • School day best

Booster Gold

• Booster Gold arguably could have done in the wildcard portion of this, but I feel like he's just well known enough that he should go here. Additionally time powers are just a fun tool kit to mess around with and I feel like there's enough creative potential that you can do some really interesting stuff with it and make a character that plays completely different from everyone else. Booster is going to be a low health-pool and average base movement speed character. The thematic fantasy he's meant to play into is this sort of Mcgyver-esque watching a ton of little different things and putting it all together to turn the tide at a critical moment. He's also potentially bar none the hardest character to play well as a lot his abilities require you to actively keep track of things that happened and have a good sense of time.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Booster Gold has a jetpack that can be used to extend his jump or can be used to stall his descent in the air
• Primary Weapon: Booster Gold's primary weapon is his gauntlet blasts. These do relatively low damage and are close range but don't require reloading. They do have a slow rate of fire though.
• Secondary Weapon: Booster sends out Skeets to fly forwards. Skeets will continue advancing until he hits a solid object and will fire at the closest visible enemy in his range. Upon hitting a solid object Skeets will return back to Booster. If Booster fires again while Skeets is travelling, Skeets will teleport back to Booster. Skeets moves slowly through the air and fires relatively slowly but his bolts do decent damage. Skeets has a small amount of health and can be destroyed by enemies. If he is destroyed it'll take him a short while before he reappears and Booster Gold can use this again.
• Ability 1-Time Warp: Booster Gold either speeds up an ally or slows down an enemy depending on who he is targeting. This ability deals no damage but has a relatively short cooldown.
• Ability 2-Back to the Past: Booster Gold restores an allies health to what it was a few seconds ago. If this would involve Booster actively lowering his teammates health, this ability does nothing. This ability has a slightly below average cooldown
• Ability 3-Been There, Done That: Booster Gold summons a temporal copy of himself that repeats whatever action he did a few seconds ago. Enemies can shoot this copy and while they cannot kill it, damage dealt to it will affect Booster presently. This ability has a relatively low cooldown but the cooldown is longer than the delay would take (you cannot repeat the same action more than once via a temporal clone).
• Ultimate-Turn Back Time: Booster Gold turns back time for all entities in a set area. This affects both allies and enemies, as well as destructible objects, and will resurrect if possible. Players not initially in the zone of effect will be unable to interact with anything being rewound until things have been fully reverted to the previous point. This ability has an incredibly long cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Dinosaur Alternate Timeline Booster Gold
  • Evil Alternate Timeline Booster Gold

Clayface

• So I feel like Clayface is decently well known as a Batman character, often showing up in Batman media but he doesn't have the star power of some other picks. However I needed more tanks and feel like he fit the role really well. Additionally he could potentially be fun to animate. Clayface would be a high health-pool, low base move speed character. His thematic fantasy is going to be a lot less focused on the shapeshifting disguise aspect of the character and instead focus more on the big unstoppable sludge-monster side of the character. This version of Clayface should be massive and his goopiness is emphasized as a way in which he's extra dangerous.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Clayface can wall-climb but cannot attack or use abilities while on a wall
• Primary Weapon: Clayface shoots out his hands as a powerful goopy forward facing fist with the ends turned into maces. This has a slow rate of fire but never requires reloading, does decent if not exceptional damage and hits at mid-range.
• Secondary Weapon: Clayface swings his arms as a goopy tentacle that sweeps back and forth. This is a mid-range option with an incredibly slow rate of fire and low damage, but it doesn't require reloading and knocks enemies hit back by a fair amount.
• Ability 1-Hammer Horror: Clayface turns his hands into a giant hammer and after a bit of wind up that should telegraph his attack, strikes downards, creating a forwards facing shockwave. Enemies directly hit by the hammer take massive damage, while enemies hit by the shockwave take light damage. All enemies hit by this ability are knocked down. This ability has a long cooldown.
• Ability 2-Curtain Call: Clayface creates a clay wall that acts as a destructible object. This wall can block attacks and can also be used as a platform to stand on. This ability deals not damage, has a relatively low cooldown and Clayface can create multiple walls all at once.
• Ability 3-Pitfall: Clayface creates a puddle of clay on the ground, slowing enemies who pass through it and dealing a minor amount of damage while they are on top of it. This puddle is fairly large and can be formed a fair bit away from Clayface. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Feat of Clay: Clayface melts into a massive puddle of clay on the ground, becoming impossible to damage. After he's done spreading to cover a massive circular area, Clayface rises up and absorbs all of the enemies touching the ground in the area he was a puddle in. These enemies are then unable to act for a while so long as they remain absorbed by Clayface. Clayface can move for a brief period of time and then shoot out the enemy characters for high damage. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Sundae Swirl Clayface
  • Radioactive Ooze Monster

Solomon Grundy

• Solomon Grundy ended up getting picked cause I wanted villains and I wanted tanks and I feel like he fit the bill pretty damn well. He's not an unknown by any means and the zombie aesthetic is one that I haven't really brought in all that much prior to this point. Solomon Grundy has a high health-pool and a low base movement speed. His thematic fantasy is meant to make him this shuffling shambling unkillable monster who's constantly drawing ever closer to his foes. He's meant to work on horror aesthetics in a sort of Jason Vorhees, implacable man kind of vibe
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Solomon Grundy can wall-climb
• Primary Weapon: Solomon Grundy pummels opponents to death with his massive fists. These attacks do decent damage but come out at an average rate and are only melee range, never requiring reloading.
• Secondary Weapon: Solomon Grundy's secondary weapon is to stomp on the ground, dealing heavy damage to all enemies on the ground near him. This attack is fairly close range and can be held to be used while moving. This attack cannot hit airborne opponents.
• Ability 1-Lost Souls: Solomon Grundy throws a projectile that draws on the power of the Black, creating a large screaming skull that is lobbed into the air. Any airborne opponents it hits are dragged until the projectile collides with a solid object. This projectile explodes upon contact with a solid object, dealing damage to all enemies it connects with. This ability has fairly low cooldown to the point where it can be frequently used.
• Ability 2-Grasp of the Dead: Solomon Grundy spawns a series of hand that will rise from a circular area on the ground and will grasp onto the first enemy they come into contact with. These hands will rise into the air if they do not connect with any enemies so flight does not prevent you from getting hit. This ability has an above average cooldown.
• Ability 3-Call of the Black: Solomon Grundy unleashes a cloud of spores, healing himself and all allies within the cloud for a fairly substantial amount over an extended period of time. This ability has a below average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Born on a Monday: Solomon Grundy refuses to die and begins to chant the nursery rhyme from which he derives his name. While he is chanting Solomon Grundy regenerates health at a rapid pace. Death will not stop the regeneration and this ability can be cast a few seconds after dying. This ability has an extremely long cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Ghoulish Gangster
  • Dr. Grundy MD

Catwoman

• Catwoman got this spot because she's very iconic, because I wanted another female villain, and because I wanted another character with a wall-climb and a wall-cling. I actually considered giving this role to Cheetah, but Catwoman's whip and gadgets gave her the edge as she was a little easier to work with in terms of designing a kit so I went with Selina Kyle. Catwoman is a low health-pool, high base move-speed character. The thematic fantasy she's meant to tap into is being cool, calm, collected and stealthy, sneaking around to pick off lone targets, or encouraging enemies to try and chase after her to their own detriment.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Catwoman can wall-cling, wall-climb,and wall-jump. Catwoman's wall-jumps go extra far
• Primary Weapon: Catwoman uses her clawed gloves to strike at a foe. The attacks come in fast and do a lot of damage over time whilst also not needing to reload and being melee ranged
• Secondary Weapon: Catwoman uses her whip to hit an enemy in the mid range, stunning them briefly if the attack connects. This attack has a decent amount of wind up and if the attack connects, Catwoman can attack again to leap to the stunned foe and immediately switch to her primary weapon. This attack does low damage and the stun is shorter than the wind-up on the whip attack.
• Ability 1-Pounce: Selina leaps into the air with her claws outstretched, pinning and dragging the first enemy she connects with and dealing decent damage when the leap stops. When Selina connects with a solid object the leap stops. If Selina connects with a wall, she will immediately transition into the wall-cling. This ability has an above average cooldown, but if it connects with an enemy, the ability is immediately refreshed.
• Ability 2-Cattrops: Selina tosses some caltrops in a set area, causing enemies who walk over them to take damage. Enemies cannot see the caltrops. This ability has a low cooldown but there is a limit to how many caltrops Selina can have out at once.
• Ability 3-Like the Cheshire Cat: Catwoman turns invisible for a short period of time using her stealth skills. Upon connecting with an attack (meaning she can wind up her whip attack while invisible) or using an ability, Selina loses her invisibility. This ability has a high cooldown.
• Ultimate-Cat Scratch Fever: Catwoman lunges in a set direction. If she connects with an enemy, she unleashes a flurry of strikes that deals more damage the lower the enemy's health is based on their maximum health and completely locks down that enemy, though Selina can still be injured by other non-locked down enemies. This ability has a relatively short cool down and can be canceled with Pounce to attempt to escape. If this ability is cancelled its cooldown is reduced. This ability has a lower than average cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Jim Balent Catwoman
  • Catwoman of Shanghai

Poison Ivy

• Poison Ivy ended up getting this spot due to being popular as a character, having a relatively easy niche she could slot into, and enabling me to complete the Gotham City Sirens. I will say that by this point I grew wary of adding many more Batman characters as I didn't want to oversaturate the roster with them and wanted to give heroes and villains from other areas of the DC universe some time to shine. As such Pamela's probably the last outright Batman related character for a while. Poison Ivy is a low health low base move-speed character whose abilities make her powerful. Her thematic fantasy was actually a little tricky for me. I didn't want to go too hard in on the femme fatale, and some of the design space for "poison gas clouds" had actually been filled by the Joker. I also didn't want to have her be making a bunch of constructs considering Green Lantern and Clayface can spawn walls, Sinestro summons his big monster construct, and plant-like turret traps might lean in on Lex's design space. In the end I decided to go with a Poison Ivy as a manipulator type of thematic fantasy, slightly leaning into dominant seductress angle, but making her a lot more overtly cold and a lot more clearly about using both allies and enemies to achieve her own ends. She has elements of making plants, poison and seduction, but they're all meant to be in service of her using tools to forcibly take control the battlefield as a broader expression of her abilities.
• Role: Support
• Movement: If Poison Ivy holds her jump, she summons a flower beneath herself that rises up and acts as a platform she can stand upon. This flower is a destructible object and it can be destroyed. Pamela cannot create a flower unless she has initiated a jump, meaning that falling because the platform was broken will not allow her to make a new one. Pamela can only make one flower at any given time and if she makes a new flower, the old flower will wilt and disappear.
• Primary Weapon: Pamela fires piercing crossbow bolts from her wrist mounted crossbow launchers. This attack works best in the mid-range and deals decent but not exceptional damage. Pamela does need to reload it after a few shots but the reload isn't overly long.
• Secondary Weapon: Pamela fires out globs of acid from the plant attached to her. This acid arcs through the air but does not go very far. It does do a solid amount of damage over time if it connects. The plant occasionally needs to reload which causes a fairly lengthy animation of it generating more acid.
• Ability 1-Thorny Embrace: Pamela launches a projectile, which upon connecting with an enemy expands into a series of vines that lock the opponent down for a fair amount of time and deal light damage over time. Airborne enemies hit by this ability fall upon being hit. Enemies not hit by the ability can free their trapped ally earlier by destroying the vines which count as a destructible object. Poison Ivy's allies can also destroy the vines and the vines have pretty low health. This ability can hit from a a surprising distance but is best in mid-range and has a relatively low cooldown.
• Ability 2-Soothing Caress: Pamela unleashes a series of spores which creates a circular aura around her. Allies in this aura are healed, while enemies are initially slowed and then put to sleep if they remain in it for to long. Enemies who are asleep instantly wake up upon taking damage. This ability has a long cooldown.
• Ability 3-Pretty Poison: Pamela blows a kiss that results in poison being launched. The projectile deals no damage to destructible objects but if it connects with an enemy, they receive damage over time. If it connects with an ally they are healed over time. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Gaia's Bounty: Pamela heals herself and converts her normal abilities into new ones which create plants which cast the abilities in their place. These plants have a decent amount of health and Pamela has a set amount of charges for each modified ability. There is a limit to how many plants she can have out at any given time but it'll only come into effect if she manages to cast her ultimate ability twice while plants remain undestroyed. Pamela cannot use her regular abilities while she still has charges of plants to grow. This ability has a high cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Harley Quinn Show Poison Ivy
  • Fall Leaves outfit

Vandal Savage

• Vandal earned his spot by being a fun tank who I think manages to play in an interesting way. He could have been a wildcard but I feel like he's been so prominent in a number of DC media that he kind of fits the bill here. The design of Vandal is likely going to draw a lot on the Young Justice version as that version is big and bulky and that works well with quickly communicating "tank" to the audience. Vandal has higher than average health but would probably be the lowest of all the tanks, instead soaking up attacks by healing frequently rather than just having a large health pool. His base move-speed would actually be above average as he's not exceptionally mobile. His thematic fantasy is meant to be that of a savage warrior who will not fall no matter how many move to strike him down. He's got tools for aiding and defending his teammates but Vandal's lack of mobility prevents him from initiating onto the enemy. Instead Vandal often is meant to sit near a squishy target and soak up their damage and absolutely massacre anyone who attempts to initiate a fight on top of them.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Vandal Savage has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Vandal uses his large sword to deal a ton of damage to anyone within melee range. His large arm and the sword being big and being swung in an arc, actually allows it to cover a lot of space in front of him, and the swings do good damage. The rate of fire is not incredible but Vandal does not need to ever reload.
• Secondary Weapon: Vandal's secondary weapon is his fists and savage fighting style. While using his fists, Vandal heals for a percentage of the damage he deals.
• Ability 1-Beastpiercer: Vandal Savage hurls a spear that pins and drags all enemies it connects with for a set duration. This ability deals extra damage to aerial opponents and general does good damage even without the bonus. It has solid range but it does get cancelled upon encountering a solid object. This ability has a low cooldown.
• Ability 2-Immortal Blessing: Vandal Savage instantly heals a percentage of his maximum health and makes himself temporarily immune to crowd control for a short duration. This ability does not prevent crowd control for very long, and has a very high cooldown.
• Ability 3-Unrelenting Charge: Vandal Savage gains a movement speed increase for a significant duration. If he jumps while this move-speed increase is active, then he'll jump much higher than normal. Vandal will leave behind a trail that quickly fades as he moves. Allies moving through this trail gain increased move-speed. This ability has an above average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Undying: Vandal Savage becomes unkillable and unable to be affected by crowd control for a set duration. This ability has a very high cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Vandar Adg
  • Dread Pirate Savage

Martian Manhunter

• Martian Manhunter was a character who I debated how exactly I wanted to fit him in and ultimately came to the conclusion that he's better as a tank than as a support. I couldn't justify him as an icon, I don't think the average person knows much if anything about him as a character, but I think his role in the DCAU makes him decently known and he's got a really fun powerset. Martian Manhunter is a high health-pool low base move-speed character. I didn't get much of the disguise element of his shapeshifting powers, but I think I managed to incorporate the other aspects of his powerset well enough and make him feel interesting to play. His thematic fantasy is very much meant to lean into actively supporting and aiding teammates, providing them protection and ensuring that they don't get hurt so he can finish the job, either by using his abilities to defend them from harm.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Martian Manhunter can fly freely
• Primary Weapon: Martian Manhunter shapeshifts and stretches his arms into large extended fists that can hit in the mid range. These attacks come out at a decent pace, don't need to reload and do low damage.
• Secondary Weapon: Martian Manhunter uses his telekinesis to launch pieces of debris at the enemy. This does better damage and has further range than his fists, but has about the same rate of fire and needs to reload after a few shots.
• Ability 1-Telekinetic Shove: Martian Manhunter uses his telekinesis to generate a large circular projectile of psychic energy that does damage and knocks back all enemies it hits, while also blocking all projectiles that come into contact with it. This ability has a significant cooldown.
• Ability 2-Martian Protection: Martian Manhunter dashes forwards. If he connects with an ally he will attach to them, heal them, and turn the ally intangible for as long as he is attached, rendering them immune to harm but also incapable of harming others. If he does not connect to an ally, Martian Manhunter will apply the healing and intangibility to himself. This ability has a long cooldown.
• Ability 3-Mental Reinforcement: Martian Manhunter psychically connects to an ally, granting them telekinetic shielding and adding a substantial amount of armor to supplement their health. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Psychic Lockdown: Martian Manhunter unleashes his psychic powers stunning and rooting in place all enemies within a set radius. Moving, getting crowd controlled, attacking or using an ability instantly cancels this ability, decreasing the overall cooldown. Enemies that are psychically locked down take additional damage while locked down. This ability has a serviceable range and a long cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Natural Martian form
  • John Jones, Police Detective

Atrocitus

• Atrocitus got the spot because I wanted to select another Green Lantern villain, and I thought he fit better than Larfleeze, or a Manhunter or Arkillo or someone like Goldface. Atrocitus has the usual lantern flexibility, but like how Sinestro and Green Lantern were hopefully differentiated I intend to make Atrocitus feel and play differently. Atrocitus has an above average health-pool, but one on the lower end of tanks and a high base move-speed. This is to facilitate his gameplay of filling a unique niche via being a drain tank. Atrocitus's thematic fantasy is meant to be of him biding his time for the right moment and then when his foes can't escape, getting into the thick of the fray and wreaking havoc to sate his long suborned anger.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Atrocitus can fly freely
• Primary Weapon: Atrocitus fires blasts from his power ring. These shots travel far and do good damage but are slow and occasionally need recharging. Atrocitus can increase the size and damage of his shots by charging them.
• Secondary Weapon: Atrocitus's secondary weapon is to wield his red power battery as a flail. This option is melee range but has deceptively long reach and covers an arc in front of Atrocitus, dealing damage to all who enter it. This attack never needs to reload but has a relatively slow rate of fire
• Ability 1-Red Lantern's Guard: Atrocitus create a large shield construct that has a high health-pool and will soak up enemy attacks and abilities. This shield will recover over time after not being damaged for a set period of time. If the shield ever runs out of health it will be broken and there will be a very long cooldown before it can be used again. If it is not broken then Atrocitus can instantly cast it and uncast it by using the ability again and vice versa. Atrocitus can only use his secondary weapon and move while the shield is up.
• Ability 2-Blood Magic: Atrocitus generates an aura around himself that has a significant radius. Atrocitus heals health equivalent to all damage taken by enemies in the aura. This aura lasts a while and the cooldown is long but only a small bit longer than the duration of the aura.
• Ability 3-Butcher's Gore: Atrocitus creates a miniature construct of the bull-like Rage entity known as the Butcher, that charges forwards and knocks back all enemies it hits, dealing significant damage
• Ultimate-Hellish Rage:Atrocitus unleashes a primal scream of hatred and empowers both himself and his allies within a set radius to do massive amounts of increased damage. This buff lasts for a significant amount of time and is extended every time a buffed individual kills an enemy. This ability has a cooldown that is a decent amount of time longer than how long the buff lasts assuming it has not been extended.
• Costumes:
  • Emperor of Tears
  • Green Lantern of Sector 666

Shazam

• Shazam AKA Captain Marvel AKA Billy Batson, earns a spot in my opinion. He's reasonably well known, having two live action movies and presence in a lot of tv shows, but he's not super iconic. I also wanted a heroic tank to contrast the many villainous tanks I had and I felthe slotted in nicely. He's meant to be a high health-pool average base move-speed character. The thematic fantasy I wanted to tap into with Shazam is to make him a tank with good ranged options and a decent defensive tools. He was a bit tricky to get right, but I think I managed to make him feel very distinct from a lot of other tanks.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Shazam can fly freely
• Primary Weapon: Shazam makes use of lightning that he blasts in a cone in front of him dealing decent damage over time. This is a mostly close range tool but doesn't really need to be aimed all that much. Shazam does occasionally need to recharge after having used it for a little while.
• Secondary Weapon: Shazam makes use of his fisticuffs as a slow paced but much closer ranged melee attack. This attack never needs to reload.
• Ability 1-Power of Zeus: Shazam throws a bolt of lightning forwards. If the bolt connects with an enemy, electricity will bounce from that enemy to a nearby other enemy up to three times. This ability does barely any damage if it does not bounce multiple times but has low enough cooldown that it can be spammed multiple times.
• Ability 2-Speed of Mercury: Shazam flies in a circle, blocking all projectiles and becoming immune to crowd control for a set duration. Any projectiles that hit Shazam while he is spinning at massive speeds will damage him and he can be killed. Shazam can move while using this ability and can use it to protect allies in the center of his circle. This ability has a very long cooldown.
• Ability 3-Durability of Atlas: Shazam electrifies himself, giving him some temporary armor that can serve as a bit of additional health to better help him tank hits. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Word of Power: Shazam calls down a massive bolt of lightning that strikes on his position, turning him temporarily into Billy Batson and dealing massive damage to nearby enemies. Billy cannot attack, fly or use abilities and has very slow base move-speed and lower base health. After a short duration, Billy can use the second part of this ability calling down lightning once again and transforming back into Shazam and fully healing himself while also damaging all enemies near the lightning bolt. This ability has a decent cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Classic Fawcett Comics costume
  • Electric Armor

Jonah Hex

• Did you know that there's a Jonah Hex movie? It's a fun fact but it did influence my decision to pick Jonah in this round as he feels just well known enough to fit. Jonah really got picked for the roster because he's a cowboy. He doesn't have a fun gimmick like say Terra-Man, but he's got a wide repertoire and an iconic look and a decent amount of stuff to pull from. The cowboy aesthetic is one no one else have and it gives him a fairly unique niche. Jonah Hex has an average health-pool and a decent base move-speed. His thematic fantasy can be summed up as "cowboy" but more practically he's focused around switching weapons and high skill aiming/moving and excels in one on one duels. He struggles tremendously with mobility and doesn't have utility but a clever player can use his bag of tricks to get one over on his foes and come out on top.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Jonah Hex has no unique movement options.
• Primary Weapon: Jonah makes use of his trusty pistol. This is a difficult gun to be accurate with and is relatively short range but deals a lot of damage. It has a slow rate of fire and frequently requires reloading.
• Secondary Weapon: Jonah makes use of his shotgun, blasting a wide area in front of him. This option is generally safer for covering a wide range in front of Jonah and generally will deal light damage, but it can do a ton of damage if the enemy is right on top of him. This option is close range and needs to reload after every shot.
• Ability 1-Quickdraw: Jonah Hex switches to which ever weapon he is not currently using. If he switches to his shotgun, the pellets gain a knock-back effect that it otherwise wouldn't have and deals increased damage. If he switches to the pistol, then Jonah Hex fans the hammer launching all six of his shots in rapid succession, enabling him to tear through the enemy's health. This ability can be used to cancel reload animations but does require the Jonah to reload the gun he has switched to after using it. This ability has a very low cooldown.
• Ability 2-The General Rides Again: Jonah Hex calls his horse the General, and begins to ride him. The General moves very quickly and jumps much higher than Jonah does naturally. While on the horse Jonah has a smaller hitbox and thus is harder to shoot, though the enemy team can attempt to shoot and kill the horse. The horse is does not turn particularly well and cannot move backwards, but while on the horse Jonah can use all of his abilities, use his weapons and gets a general damage buff. This ability has a long cooldown and Jonah will eventually dismount no matter what after a set duration.
• Ability 3-Tomahawk: Jonah Hex hurls a tomahawk a fair distance. If this connects with an airborne enemy, then this ability does extra damage and knocks them to the ground. This ability has a low cooldown.
• Ultimate-Dead Man Walking: Jonah Hex enters a unique stance. If he can keep a nearby enemy within his line of sight for a set duration, then Jonah Hex instantly-kills them with a well placed shot from his pistol. While in the stance Jonah moves slowly and a loud voiceline plays to signal that he has entered this stance. This ability can be used while using The General Rides Again. This ability has a long cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Hexxed Timeline
  • Old Man Jonah Hex

Metallo

• Metallo got a spot due to being decently well known, and for being able to fill another tank position, for being a robot, and for being a Superman villain, all of which were things I wanted. As such I ended up picking Metallo to fill in this niche. Metallo is probably going to be a big hulking monster of a character, keeping the skull head and general mecha-skeleton aesthetic, but being way bigger than the average character. He has a high health pool and mediocre base move-speed. As for his thematic fantasy, Metallo's meant to give a sense of being this massive mechanical juggernaut, stomping around like the antagonist in a monster movie, rampaging through a city. He's an aggressive tank, but one that can hit from a distance due to otherwise never being able to catch anyone and being a very big obvious target.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Metallo has thrusters that he can use to extend his jump upwards for a limited duration or stall his fall in the air.
• Primary Weapon: Metallo makes use of his kryptonite cannon which replaces one of his hands. This cannon needs to recharge after a few shots but can fire in quick bursts. The shots are big and do decent damage but don't work well outside of the mid-range.
• Secondary Weapon: Metallo opens up his chest and unleashed a beam of concentrated kryptonite. This beam does not need to reload and can do massive damage to those caught by it while also having incredible range, but Metallo takes a ton more damage while using this and cannot use abilities at the same time.
• Ability 1-Bulwark: Metallo morphs one of his arms into a riot shield at most. While this ability is active Metallo takes reduced damage, has even further reduced move-speed, and cannot use any other ability. Allies can take cover behind Metallo more easily while this ability is active as it extends his hitbox to be a more effective screen. This ability has no cooldown and does no damage.
• Ability 2-Self-Repair: Metallo uses his nanobots to form small arms which repair him while he is in combat, healing him for some small amount. This ability has a decent cooldown and does no damage.
• Ability 3-Heat Seeking Missiles: Metallo launches a small number of missiles into the air. They will then attempt to lock onto the nearest possible enemy and track their movements. Upon connecting with an enemy or a solid object, the missile explodes, dealing decent damage. The missiles will explode regardless after a set duration and they are not as maneuverable as players will be. This ability has an above average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Full Metal Rampage: Metallo upgrades himself, incorporating more machines into his body and taking on a giant robot form, massively increasing his health, the size of the projectiles from his primary and secondary weapons, and his hitbox. When in this state, all of his abilities are upgraded. Bulwark becomes Kryptonite Killdozer and what was once just a shield now also includes a whirling mess of kryptonite buzzsaws that deal high damage to any enemy that comes into contact with it. Additionally Kryptonite Killdozer does not prevent the use of other abilities any more. Self-Repair becomes Torched Earth and instead of healing himself Metallo forms a bunch of little modules that set fire to a large area in front of him and deal damage over time to any enemy caught within it. Heat Seeking Missiles becomes Napalm Horizon and Metallo shoot more missiles that cause bigger explosions. Finally Full Metal Rampage becomes Uncontrolled Detonation where Metallo after a few seconds of build up, kills himself but causes a massive explosion that can deal huge damage to enemies, but it blocked by walls. This ability has a massive cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Tattered John Corben disguise
  • Roger Corben Costume

Static

• This one was rough for me. I wanted to include a female villain outside of Batman's rogues gallery so I considered Livewire. I also considered using Black Lightning in this spot instead. I also felt that this might have some thematic overlap with Shazam as I was working with two characters who were going to be throwing around lightning. Ultimately though Static had enough that he could bring to the table that no one else could that I felt pretty good about including him. Static's got a high base move speed and a low health-pool. The thematic fantasy he's generally going to be filling is meant to build off the sort of friendly neighborhood hero vibe, where he's not the big gun, but he can support key players and move in unforeseen ways that let him contribute effectively to a team without much struggle.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Static can wall-cling, wall-run and wall-jump
• Primary Weapon: Static makes use of quick blasts of lightning. These do low damage but are very fast moving projectiles. The projectiles are small but they can travel pretty far even if they're not incredibly long range. They also do not ever require reloading.
• Secondary Weapon: Static picks up some metal debris with his electromagnetism and hurls it at opponents. This has a very slow rate of fire and doesn't go far but does cause a lot of damage if it connects. Static can charge this attack to hurl all his debris at once. This has a very length reload.
• Ability 1-Defibrilator Pulse: Static lets out a pulse of electricity that heals nearby allies for a fair percent of health and deals minor damage to enemies. This ability is fairly close range and has a decent cooldown.
• Ability 2-Static Saucer: Static unfolds his saucer and steps onto it, enabling him to fly. Static can carry multiple teammates on this saucer platform and use it to enable his whole team to reach areas they otherwise might not be able to get to. This ability has no cooldown, but does have decently lengthy start and end animations.
• Ability 3-Zap Cap: Static hurls a small grenade that stores his electromagnetic charge stunning all enemies who get caught by its explosion. This ability deals low damage and has a decent cooldown.
• Ultimate-Can't Keep a Good Hero Down!: Static supercharges his electromagnetic aura granting him greatly increased move speed and more health while also healing all allies in a set aura around him.
• Costumes:
  • Burger Fool Uniform
  • Young Justice outfit

The Wild Cards
Adam Strange

• This is where I start making some strange picks for the roster and I get to have fun going way out there for some of my choices. Adam Strange is not a well known superhero, but he's got a very fun Flash Gordon-esque aesthetic that no one else in the cast really has. Also he has a gun, which naturally makes him easy to slot into a hero shooter. Adam Strange has average health and average base move-speed.The thematic fantasy he's meant to fulfill is that of this daring explorer, making use of a simple movement based kit to do fairly impressive outplays if cleverly applied. That being said a big part of his appeal is just the kind of cheesy sci-fi charm he can bring to the table.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Adam Strange has a jetpack which he can use to extend his jump upwards for a limited duration or to stall while he is in the air.
• Primary Weapon: Adam makes use of his Rannian ray gun, a decently powerful pistol with a fast rate of fire and a quick reload speed. The ray gun works best in close combat, but if you're good enough at aiming you can make long shots
• Secondary Weapon: Adam pulls out a laser sword, reminiscent of a lightsaber. This sword deals good damage and doesn't require reloading, but is limited to melee range.
• Ability 1-Rannian Rush: Adam dashes forwards with his laser sword, dealing damage to all enemies he passes through. This ability has decent range and a longer than average cooldown.
• Ability 2-Zeta Beam Blink: Adam Strange teleports forwards a short distance but retains his moment from before his teleport. This ability works on a charge system and Adam can store up to two charges at a time. This ability recovers charges fairly quickly.
• Ability 3-A to B: Adam marks a decent sizes circular area with his Zeta beam module. Upon using this ability again, anyone directly on top of or slightly above the mark is teleported to the second area Adam marks. Adam can mark spots in the air. This ability has a significant cooldown.
• Ultimate-Out of the Fire: Adam calls down a massive amount of Zeta Beam Rays, to a set area. Anyone hit by the ability is teleported to a Rannian outpost for a short while, where healing is somewhat available. This ability can be cancelled by Adam at any point and everyone will automatically be teleported back after some time has passed. This ability can be used to remove enemies from play temporarily, save allies from certain death, or force duels. This ability has a fairly high cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • One Small Step for Man
  • Rannian Warrior

Detective Chimp

• Detective Chimp was picked as another pretty out there pick. Not a lot of people know him outside of comic fans, and he is pretty clearly non-human in a way no other character is. I considered a few other monkey related characters but I ultimately decided on Detective Chimp because I feel like he's got the best personality to leverage the inherent humor of playing as a monkey, and by leaning into the "badass and incredibly cerebral" aspects of the character, you can make him even funnier. Detective Chimp has an average health-pool and high base move-speed. He's not a joke character but his thematic fantasy is meant to lean in on the whackier elements of DC comics and make him inherently kind of goofy despite being very capable and effective.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Detective Chimp can wall-climb, wall-cling and wall-jump. He wall-climbs very quickly.
• Primary Weapon: Detective Chimp uses the Sword of Night to fire off energy slashes that deal damage to all they pass through. These abilities are fairly long range, but those who are in melee range and get hit directly by the sword will take a lot more damage than those hit by the energy slashes. This weapon never needs to reload but has a slow rate of fire.
• Secondary Weapon: Detective Chimp uses a derringer pistol. This is relatively high damage and can be used while he is on a wall. The gun does often need to be reloaded, it doesn't fire quickly and works best up relatively close, but it's ability to be used on the wall still makes it a solid tool.
• Ability 1-A Detective's Intuition: Detective Chimp deduces the location of all enemies in an area around him, including those who would otherwise be invisible. After a short amount of time, Detective Chimp's way of seeing will return to normal. This ability deals no damage and has a fairly short cooldown.
• Ability 2-Elixir Toss: Detective Chimp hurls a bottle containing an elixir. Allies hit by the elixir are healed by water from the fountain of youth. Enemies hit by the elixir are poisoned by a profoundly painful concoction, that deals light amounts of damage over time. This ability has a relatively short cooldown.
• Ability 3-Nine Form Parry: Detective Chimp uses the Sword of Night to parry an oncoming blow, taking no damage if he successfully times it. If an attack does not connect then this does nothing. If Detective Chimp parries a non beam projectile, it is deflected. If Detective Chimp parries a melee attack, the enemy who initiated the attack is stunned. Detective Chimp cannot parry explosions or AOE effects. If Detective Chimp successfully parries an attack, the cooldown is instantly over. Otherwise this ability has a very long cooldown. Detective Chimp will yell out one of the nine classical French parry numbers depending on which parry animation he does
• Ultimate-Nightfall: Detective Chimp draws upon the power of the Sword of Night, slashing open a rift from which tendrils of darkness lance out in a set direction, dealing damage to all those they hit.
• Costumes:
  • Smoking Jacket Loungewear
  • Monkey Mafia

Toyman

• Toyman got his position initially because I wanted to throw a few more Superman villains on here and I thought he could work as a tank. I still wanted to keep him even as I realized my ideas for making him a tank, putting him permenantly in a big mech suit, would likely make him very similar to Metallo. As such I decided to retool him as a support, mostly because I like Toyman and think he would be really cool, though I did let him keep a mech suit for his ultimate ability. Toyman's got a low base movement speed and a low health-pool. Toyman's retooled thematic fantasy is to make him an aggressive set-up support. He's designed to be laying traps and setting up things to cause problems for the enemy team.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Toyman has a jetpack which can extend his jump upwards in the air for a limited in the air or be used to stall his fall
• Primary Weapon: Toyman uses a Tommy gun which shoots quickly and can deal good damage but is broadly inaccurate and has a length reload period.
• Secondary Weapon: Toyman makes use of a weaponized yo-yo that hits in the mid-range. The yo-yo requires a lot of build up to use optimally. Attacking again while the yo-yo is headed out recalls it and sends it back to Toyman. To maximize damage on the yo-yo, Toyman must time the recall so that the yo-yo can extend to full length twice before then hitting the opponent at maximum range. The yo-yo can be very powerful if you get good with it, but it is difficult and very inconsistent. It doesn't ever need to be reloaded however.
• Ability 1-Action Figure: Toyman creates a robotic double of either himself or one of his teammates. This double will remain fixed in place and will attack using the primary weapon the moment an opponent enters its visible range. The robotic duplicate has low health and can be destroyed, but to the enemy appears to have the same health as a normal opponent. There is a limit to how many duplicates Toyman can have out at a given time but this ability has a relatively short cooldown.
• Ability 2-Unseen Trampoline: Toyman places a trampoline on a solid object that is invisible to enemies. Whenever someone walks over it they are launched away from the trap and the trap is destroyed. If an enemy activates the trap they take a small amount of damage, while allies are only launched. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Ability 3-Goodie Bags: Toyman places a goodie bag on the ground. Allies who move over the goodie bag, gain armor and a temporary damage buff. This ability works on a charge system and the charges recover at a moderate rate.
• Ultimate-Out of the Box: Toyman dons a mech suit that allows him to freely fly and allows him to fire miniguns attached to the arm that shoots a play-doh-like substance. If an opponent is hit with enough shots, they are encased in the material and effectively frozen for a short while or until someone other than Toyman damages them. Toyman ditches the mech suit after enough time passes. The miniguns also have a bit of start-up to them. This ability has a decently long cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Jack Nimball
  • Toy Napoleon

Silver Swan

• So Silver Swan was my pick for a second Wonder Woman villain. She's not super well known but she is fairly significant, and I already had issues with both Cheetah and Ares, and I didn't like what I came up with while trying to figure out ways to make Veronica Cale, or Paula von Gunther, or Dr. Poison or Dr. Cyber work. The Wonder Woman villain that got closest to making the cut but didn't was actually Red Panzer. Silver Swan for me however ended up hitting a really natural niche, taking ideas from both the scrapped Hawkgirl and Black Canary roles I had and managing to make it work in a really cohesive kit. Silver Swan in this case if Vanessa Kapatelis. She's a low health-pool very high base move-speed character, designed to be a damage dealing skirmisher after having weakened foes picks off the vulnerable and frightened. She's meant to be a metaphorical vulture of sorts, constantly circling and looking for the dying before moving in once she thinks death is assured.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Silver Swan can fly freely
• Primary Weapon: Silver Swan launches piercing feathers which deal damage to all enemies they pass through. These feathers embed into the first solid object they hit and remain for a short while before later fading away. This ability works well from long range but only deals small amounts of damage. It does have a decent rate of fire and does occasionally require reloading, though the animation is relatively brief.
• Secondary Weapon: Silver Swan launches a high damage sonic scream. This attack can be charged up. The more it is charged the larger the AOE of the scream is and the further it travels. This attack deals more damage the lower on health the enemy it hits is, based of off their percentage max health. This attack has a long wind up and a slow rate of fire.
• Ability 1-Feather Flurry: Silver Swan tosses out a large amount of her razor sharp feathers in rapid succession, dealing damage to anyone she hits. This ability does not affect her primary weapon but the tossed feathers function the same way. Silver Swan cannot turn while using this ability. This ability can do decent damage but is more likely to do small amounts. This ability has a low cooldown.
• Ability 2-Rending Swoop: Silver Swan swoops down and forwards, damaging and slashing all enemies she passes through with her razor sharp claws, before rising back up to her original height. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Ability 3-Glittering Garb: Silver Swan recalls all of the feathers that remain intact, dealing damage to all enemies they pass through and healing Silver Swan for an amount that's dependent on how many returned to her, the more feathers returned, the more she heals. This ability can do a lot of damage if Silver Swan positions herself right and the ability has a long cooldown
• Ultimate-Beautiful Privilege: Silver Swan goes manic and her attack speed for her primary and secondary abilities is massively increased allowing her to be, much much faster when using them. This ability has a relatively short cooldown
• Costumes:
  • Fallen Angel
  • Classic Valkyrie

Golden Glider

• I might not have been able to get the Flash to work, but I got a Flash villain into the roster! I definitely wanted a Flash villain and I toyed around with a fair few. Gorilla Grodd was scrapped for being kind of a boring mix of Martian Manhunter and Detective Chimp, Captain Boomerang just felt uninspired to me, and Weather Wizard actually had most of a kit but was nixed as I kept having problems differentiating his lightning based attacks from Shazam and Static. Initially Golden Glider was being designed as Captain Cold, but as I struggled to think of a secondary weapon for Captain Cold, I remembered that in the New 52, DC gave Golden Glider these speed draining tendril things. From there Golden Glider was developed and I feel pretty good about the final product of how Lisa Snart turned out. Golden Glider's thematic fantasy is that she's very much meant to be controlling the speed and pace of the match, slowing down enemies and opening up new routes for her allies. She's got a below average health-pool and an above average base move-speed in order to aid her in this but ensure that she doesn't become overly oppressive.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Golden Glider can wall-run
• Primary Weapon: Golden Glider uses a modified cold gun that fires out golden energy in a small area in front of her. This deals very low damage but if Golden Glider hits an opponent enough times with it in short succession, they are frozen in place. This attack is fairly short range and does require a reload every so often.
• Secondary Weapon: Golden Glider uses a series of tendrils attached to her back to lash out and strike the area in front of her. This has better range and damage than her primary weapon but doesn't go incredibly far. Enemies struck by the tendrils are slowed down by a little bit. This attack does not ever require reloading.
• Ability 1-Whiplash: Golden Glider shoots out a tendril a fair distance. If it connects with an ally, it grants them extra movement speed, if it connects with an enemy it reduces their movement speed. This ability can do low damage and has a short cooldown.
• Ability 2-Golden Road: Golden Glider activates a secret part of her skates that causes them to begin generating golden ice beneath them, allowing her to move faster and construct a road of ice as a destructible object. Golden Glider can create ice roads that reach high into the air, allowing her to reach heights she otherwise wouldn't. All other players can also use these structures and they can destroy them like all destructible objects. This ability has a relatively short cooldown and deals no damage.
• Ability 3-Icebreaker: Golden Glider fires a shot from her modified cold gun. If it hits a frozen enemy it deals massive damage. If it hits a non-frozen enemy, it deals light damage. This ability has a fairly short cooldown.
• Ultimate-Winter Wonderland: Golden Glider rapidly skates in a circle and uses her modified cold gun to cause the entire area to turn to ice. Enemies who come into contact with the area for too long are frozen. The iced over area remains for a while, and while there is a brief period after being frozen in which an enemy cannot be frozen again, enemies who stand on top of the area can be frozen multiple times. This ability has a relatively short cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Kiteman Hell Yeah! costume
  • Captain Cold Cosplay

Abra Kadabra

• Abra Kadabra was my second Flash villain inclusion and one who I was especially fond of because he can also serve as a natural counterpoint to Zatanna. I was tempted to bring in a Zatanna villain or a powerful evil magic user like Felix Faust or Wotan, but I like Abra a lot and feel that the whole "stage magician with actual magic vs. man pretending to be an actual magician but is really just putting on a show" was a bit better for a rivalry and gave a unique angle to things. Add in that he also potentially gives some fun back and forth with Booster and I felt solid including him as part of an ensemble. Now as for a gameplay niche, there's so much that can be done with magic that I had plenty of options for Abra Kadabra. I know I'd be keeping him squishy and slow but beyond that I had a lot to do. Ultimately the thematic fantasy I settled on for Abra is to make him kind of loud and always putting on a show. His abilities are flashy and eye-catching but it's oftentimes not Abra who should be focused on but instead his allies who utilize his performance to a large benefit.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Abra Kadabra can hold his jump to levitate in place and if he moves he'll slowly glide in that direction while drifting back down.
• Primary Weapon: Abra Kadabra hurls "enchanted" razor sharp playing cards. He has 52 two cards he can throw before he needs to reload, one of which is the ace of spades which deals massive damage if it hits an opponent. Abra does not know where it is among his 52 cards but he'll know if the next card he hurls will be the ace of spades. Normal cards deal pretty low damage and while the range and rate of fire is decent there is an incredibly length reload animation for this.
• Secondary Weapon: Abra Kadabra spews fire in an arc in front of him like a fire breather. This ability can deal a lot of damage over time but is very close range and also has a length reload animation.
• Ability 1-Bound in a Box: Abra Kadabra summons a box around an opponent, doing damage and removing them from play for a very short while. While the opponent is bound in the box they cannot take damage. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Ability 2-Gateway to Mystery: Abra Kadabra creates a portal from one location to another. The portal can be seen and shot through and both enemies and allies can move through it. The portal can be forcibly closed by firing at the eyeball shaped projector keeping it open and destroying it. If one projector is destroyed, both vanish. This ability has a fairly high cooldown and does no damage but if he can keep them from getting destroyed, Abra Kadabra can potentially get multiple portals going.
• Ability 3-Is This Your Card?: Abra Kadabra turns the next card he will hurl with his primary weapon into the ace of spades. This ability has a substantial cooldown.
• Ultimate-Disappearing Act: Abra Kadabra casts an illusion that turns himself and all of his allies invisible so long as they remain within his zone of invisibility and they have not dealt damage to an enemy. This zone of invisibility is not massive but can fit an entire team and give them some room to move and glowing energy clearly marks where it begins and ends. This ability has an average cooldown and deals no damage.
• Costumes:
  • Escape artist straightjacket
  • Classic top hat magician

Katana

• So for me the pick of Katana was informed by wanting to get at least one Asian character on the roster. She might've belonged in the second stringer group but I don't think people are super-familiar with her to the point where she seems like a bit of a wildcard pick to me more than anything. I didn't want to do Cheshire for fear of overlapping too much with Catwoman (stealth cat themed non-powered individual), didn't want to do Shado, Emiko Queen, Lisa Yurigama or Sun Archer due to not wanting to try and make two different archer characters feel very distinct, and didn't want to do Lady Shiva due to melee only being really hard to balance and it being a struggle to give her a full and interesting kit that wasn't just all variants on the same thing. I actually initially tried to get a working Dr. Light kit and failed, and didn't want to do a Ryan Choi Atom due to viewing shrinking as a power that could quickly become problematic in a shooter. August General in Iron was considered, but he's always covered in armor so he was out. I also knew that no matter how much I liked Cassandra Cain as a character, she had too much thematic overlap with Batman and would likely have problems with getting enough skills that weren't just "more martial arts". Katana was ultimately the pick I felt work best. I do think ultimately Katana ended up working out. She's probably not my most original design but the relatively low health-pool relatively high base move-speed ninja is a pretty basic archetype. Katana's thematic fantasy is ultimately "ninja" and she's built around that. She's got less stealthy aspect and more leaning on the cool acrobatic fighting stuff, but I think it's ultimately the sort of rule of cool ninja people generally prefer.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Katana can double-jump, wall-run and wall-jump. Wall-jumping resets her double-jump allowing her to do so again.
• Primary Weapon: Katana uses the soultaker sword. This is a melee ranged attack but it deals a lot of damage with its devastating strikes and does not ever require reloading.
• Secondary Weapon: Katana throws a series of shuriken. These are generally based in short ranges and are not very accurate or high damage but they do cover a decent area and are a ranged option. They need to be restocked every so often and do not have a very fast rate of fire.
• Ability 1-Killing Stroke: Katana empowers her next attack with her primary weapon to do even more damage. This ability has a low cooldown.
• Ability 2-Spirit Dash: Katana draws upon the power of the souls contained within her blade and uses them to perform a dash in a set direction. Some momentum is maintained after this dash and all enemies who this dash passes through are damaged. This dash resets Katana's double-jump and can be angled upwards to gain height, as well as used in the air. This ability has a fairly short range, but also has a relatively short cooldown.
• Ability 3-Soultaker Slash: Katana slashes an opponent with the sword, temporarily knocking their soul out of their body. The enemy whose soul has been knocked out of their body is stunned for a short while and their soul can be attacked to deal damage to them as well as their body. This ability has an above average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Sword of Vengeance: Katana teleports from enemy to enemy in a set area, slashing for a good amount of damage with each jump until the duration of the ability is over or all enemies inside her area is dead. Katana can move while using this ability to shift the area she is affecting and she is impossible to hit during this ability. This ability has a long cooldown cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Red and Yellow Samurai gear
  • Beware the Batman catsuit

Bronze Tiger

• So I selected Bronze Tiger in part because of the weapon. I was thinking of what kind of ranged weapons have I not yet given this fairly substantial cast of characters thus far and came up with the idea of a rope dart or kusarigama. I could not think of any DC comics character off the top of my head who used them, but I figured Bronze Tiger could very easily be tooled to use it, given his general martial arts background. I was hesitant to go with a martial artist but I felt like the really solid primary and secondary weapon were worth having to struggle a bit on the abilities. It took a bit but I got a Bronze Tiger I'm happy with. The thematic fantasy is also very ninja-esque but where Katana was very centered around her speed and mobility and flipping and dipping, Bronze Tiger was pushed a little more into the ambush direction. He's still not super stealthy but he can move pretty effectively and he has enough tools to get the drop on a squishy target, do damage and then leave. He's got above average health and move-speed and is meant to solidly find and make picks if the enemy team isn't warily watching lesser used angles.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Bronze Tiger has a wall-climb, wall-run, wall-jump and wall-cling.
• Primary Weapon: Bronze Tiger's primary weapon is a bladed rope dart that he can throw out and hit people from decently far away. It does good damage, with the damage getting better the further away Bronze Tiger hits an opponent with it, but stops at the first target it hits and has a slow rate of fire. Bronze Tiger can cancel the attack by hitting the button again before the rope dart has extended to its full length in order to make it take less time to fire again.
• Secondary Weapon: Bronze Tiger makes use of clawed gauntlets in melee range. These swipes deal good damage, better than the rope dart up close but worse than the rope dart at max range. This attack does not ever require reloading.
• Ability 1-Catch a Tiger by the Tail: Bronze Tiger throws his rope dart. If it connects with an enemy, that enemy takes damaged and is pulled to Bronze Tiger's locations. This ability has good range and a significant cooldown.
• Ability 2-Slicing Circle: Bronze Tiger rapidly spins his rope dart around himself forming an x directly in front and behind himself that's past melee range but not at the full range of the rope dart. Any enemy or destructible object that comes into contact with the spinning rope dart takes damage over time, with the "x" dealing double damage. This can deal a lot of damage over time. Bronze Tiger can move but cannot turn or use his special movement options while this ability is active. Bronze Tiger can cancel this ability by hitting it again to end it early and to partially refund its cooldown. Upon ending Bronze Tiger's next rope dart attack will be empowered to do extra damage. This ability has a long cooldown if the length hasn't been shortened via premature cancellation.
• Ability 3-Bone Shattering Blow: Bronze Tiger delivers a devastating melee range palm strike, that deals more damage the lower health the enemy is based on percentage max health. This attack also knocks the opponent back a significant distance. This ability has a decent cooldown.
• Ultimate-Eye of the Hunter: Bronze Tiger activates his instincts to find his opponents. Upon activating this ability, Bronze Tiger will see a red trail that leads to the enemy with the lowest current health as of this moment. This trail will lead to them even if they are invisible. This ability lasts for a while and has a cooldown that lasts a fair bit longer. This ability deals no damage.
• Costumes:
  • Man-Tiger
  • League of Assassins robes

Validus

• Validus won his spot on the roster because I needed more tanks. I've met the quota I was looking for on damage and support but I struggled with coming up with twelve tanks who didn't overlap too much thematically or kit wise. As such I started trying to think of what characters would make really good fun tanks, and eventually I settled on Validus. I don't think most people are aware of Validus but he's a fun character, being a frequent member of the Fatal Five. He's also humongous and a psychic with a visual flair a fair bit different from Martian Manhunter. As such I felt like he could be a really good tank, though he's big enough that I actually think he'd need to be scaled down compared to how big he is generally. That being said I had some fun ideas about how to get him to fit into the cast. For a start Validus has the highest health-pool, the slowest base move-speed and the largest character model and hitbox. Validus is meant to fulfill this thematic fantasy of being a massive unstoppable juggernaut. To switch over to gameplay terms, he's what I would like to call an "AOE tank" where his massive size and AOE abilities allow him to soak up a ton of damage. In general Validus's design is going to revolve around him being incredibly big. It might be hubris, but I actually think a way to make Validus bigger without causing too much problems for room design is to have him spend most of his time walking on his knuckles like a gorilla, so that his height is effectively halved most of the time. That being said Validus's size likely means headshots won't do more damage on him unless you hit a specific part of his head or something to make it so that he's not got a massive blaring weak point that's easy to hit.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Validus can double-jump and can glide very slowly using his psychic powers.
• Primary Weapon: Validus unleashes massive psychic blasts from his head. These blasts are very large slow moving projectiles that do good damage, but have a very visible wind up, and a very slow rate of fire. They can travel far if fired into open area's but tend to struggle when there are a lot of solid objects to collide with and end. This attack never requires reloading however.
• Secondary Weapon: Validus charges up for a while and then unleashes a flurry of psychic bolts for a few seconds. Each bolt does very low damage and it is broadly inaccurate but they move quickly and cover a relatively large area. The wind up time is significant but there is never any reloading beyond that.
• Ability 1-Bubble of Tranquility: Validus creates a psychic dome around himself. This dome acts as a shield that absorbs all shots coming in. Enemies can walk through the dome without issue. The psychic dome has a massive amount of health and can take a large amount of damage. If the dome runs out of health then it shatters and Validus takes damage. Validus can cancel this ability at any time by using it once again and can freely move, attack and use abilities while the dome is up. The less health the dome has when it goes away the longer the cooldown for this ability is.
• Ability 2-Manifestation of Rage: Validus lashes out with his fists with surprising speed, slamming the ground and knocking down and dealing heavy damage to any enemies who come into contact with his fists while also generating a shockwave that deals a small amount of damage and knocks back any enemies hit by it. If Validus uses this ability while in the air, he uses his telekinetic abilities to hurl himself in the air surprisingly quickly. Any enemies he collides with are dragged along his flight course before he then slams into the ground, knocking enemies down and generating shockwaves in a manner similar to the grounded version of this ability. If Validus's fist come into contact with a destructible object, that object is instantly destroyed. This ability has an above average length cooldown.
• Ability 3-Signs of Turbulent Thoughts: Validus's psychic powers manifest a lightning storm around him, creating a sizeable aura that deals damage over time to all enemies within it. This ability has a long cooldown.
• Ultimate-Shared Consciousness: Validus uses his psychic powers to link all allies within a set area together, causing them to all share and pool their life together. Allies that walk into the area of effect while it is still active contribute their life pool to the total, while allies who walk out of the area of effect take a portion of the total health pool equal to 1 out of however many allies were linked. All healing and health regeneration across allies is shared. This ability deals no damage but makes it very hard to kill anyone effected by it, though it does come with the downside that it makes it so everybody dies simultaneously and has a weakness to AOE damage. This ability lasts a decent length of time but has a long cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Galaxy Brained
  • Titan of Stone

Nuclear Family

• So the Nuclear Family was a fun design choice of "who the heck would pick them" combined with a way to make a really out there damage type character. There are more than enough damage characters at this point, with me only including one more besides them, but the Nuclear Family are by far the weirdest most unique characters in this roster. The key element of the Nuclear family is that they are technically six characters in one. Most of the time the player only controls a single member at any given time, while the rest run off of an AI routine the player selected before switching to a different one. Because of this you've got to basically manage six different characters at once while constantly updating the AI routines to ensure the group works as best as possible. Their thematic fantasy is letting you control an entire group. I actually originally wanted to use the Metal Men for this concept but I figured that the Nuclear Family's more ranged abilities and relative level of consistency across each member made them a better pick for fulfilling this niche of being able to coordinate multiple characters at once. Each member of the Nuclear family has slightly different characteristics. Dad has the highest health-pool but the lowest base move-speed and largest hitbox (though they don't get radically far from the average). Mom the second highest health-pool and the second slowest base move-speed but she has a taller and thinner hitbox than Biff. Biff has is average in both health-pool and move speed amongst the group. Sis has a below average-health pool and an above average move speed but also has the third smallest hit box. Brat has the the second lowest health-pool and below average base move-speed but the second smallest hitbox. Lastly Dog has a miniscule health pool, a ridiculously fast base-move-speed and also a very small hitbox but can barely gain height while jumping. Suffice to say there's a lot of little details and micromanagement that goes into playing them well. Hypothetically they are incredibly, letting you bring five more characters to the team then you normally could, but they're very, very difficult to play to that level.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Sis can wall-jump and Biff has very large jumps. The rest of the Nuclear Family have no special movement options and Dog can barely gain height while jumping.
• Primary Weapon: Dad fires nuclear blasts out of his palm, Mom fires five small shots out of her fingertips, Biff fires nuclear blasts out of his palm, as does Sis, while Brat lobs nuclear energy like he's throwing a ball, and Dog fires nuclear blasts out of his mouth. All six of them share the same rate of fire and range. Dad deals the most damage, followed by Brat, then Biff, then Sis, then Dog and finally Mom. None of them ever need to reload their weapons
• Secondary Weapon: The secondary weapon is the AI programming for the Nuclear Family member the player is currently playing as. They all share a few basic AI routines (Hold Position, Move with Team, Attempt to Flank, Search for Enemies, Get the High Ground, and Push Forwards are the ones I've thought of though there could be more). Each of the Nuclear Family also has a unique routine. Dad has Lead the Family (find the nearest Nuclear Family Member then replicate their routine while staying in front of them), Mom has Support the Children (find Biff, Sis and/or Brat and copy their routine while remaining behind them), Biff has Walk the Dog (follow Dog), Sis has Get some Privacy (move away from other members of the Nuclear Family), Brat has Harass the Enemy (same as attempt to flank but will also spam annoying voicelines), and Dog has Go Wild (move quickly and behave randomly). These routines kick in automatically when the player is not playing as them.
• Ability 1-Switch Family Member: The player switches which family member they are controlling. The order the switch occurs in is set as it goes from Dad to Mom to Biff to Sis to Brat to Dog and then back to Dad. This ability has no cooldown. Whenever the Nuclear Family member the player is playing dies, the player then switches to controlling the next available member of the family in the switch order.
• Ability 2- A Hop, a Skip and a Jump: The Nuclear family activate thrusters in their feet allowing them to jump incredibly high up into the air, save for Dog. This ability resets Sis's jumps allowing her to jump once more. Dog does not jump like the rest instead his thruster causes him to begin flying like a guidable missile for a short time, instead of the general jump arc, the rest of the Nuclear Family have. This ability has a fairly short cooldown.
• Ability 3-Meltdown: The member being controlled by the player deals a percentage of their max health as damage to themselves. If they survive this then their next few shots deal more damage and come out at a faster rate of fire. If they do not survive this, then they have a short period of time in which they can still move, but cannot heal or take damage. After a set interval of time the Nuclear family member explodes dealing damage to all enemies caught in the radius of the blast. The size of the blast is proportional to the size of the Nuclear Family Member's hitbox. This ability also has a decently short cooldown.
• Ultimate-Keep the Family Together: All members of the family respawn, are healed to full and are teleported to wherever the member the player is controlling is. The player then gets control of all six members at once, with the entire family, moving, firing and using abilities in synch. After the duration of this ability the Nuclear Family ceases to act as a single unit and continues to act as five members controlled by AI and one controlled by the player. This ability has a very long cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Robotic Skeletons
  • Modern Day sitcom family

Mawzir

• Mawzir is the last of my picks for damage type characters. It's a pretty minor character, being a servant of the Arkannone (demons governing the domain of guns) but it's got a fun design, a connection to firearms, and a design that thoroughly breaks traditional human body-types having multiple arms. For me it was fun enough to justify including its presence in the roster and while it probably doesn't feel super unique, mostly being another very gun focused character, the unique elements it brings to the table were things I felt were worth it. Mawzir is intended to have average health and below average base move-speed. It more than any other character is meant to tap into the thematic fantasy of just pulling out a lot of guns and blasting your opposition into oblivion. Mawzir is designed such that players need to pick their moments to best do damage but if they can find their moment they can tear through enemies.
• Role: Damage
• Movement: Mawzir has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Mawzir makes use of the magical rifle, the Ace of Winchesters. This weapon is not quite a sniper rifle but can hit from a fair bit of distance and has high stopping power. It does have a slow rate of fire and needs to be reloaded after only a few shots.
• Secondary Weapon: Mawzir makes use of a pair of submachine guns that it duel-wields. These have relatively low damage for each individual shot but can deal a lot of damage over time and have a very high rate of fire and a fairly large magazine size. They take a second to reload
• Ability 1-Locked and Loaded: Mawzir uses all four of its arms to grab a gun, with the top two taking submachine guns, and the bottom two pulling out shotguns. Mawzir can now fire all four guns simultaneously and hit from a variety of ranges. This state lasts for a decent amount of time but can be cancelled early. This ability has a decently long cooldown and deals no direct damage, but can massively ramp up Mawzir's damage output.
• Ability 2-Crawled from the Pit: Mawzir gets on the ground, making its hitbox substantially smaller, and scuttles along the ground like a demented spider. Mawzir cannot attack or use abilities while in this state. Mawzir has massively increased move speed and can wall-climb in this state. This ability does no damage and has no cooldown.
• Ability 3-Spray and Pray: Mawzir draws a second set of submachine guns and spins its second set of arms randomly firing in the area around it. Mawzir can attack and move as normal while in this state.
• Ultimate-Lords of the Gun: Mawzir draws upon the Arkannone, summoning dozens of spectral guns that float behind it. These guns will fire at a set duration no matter what Mawzir does, and their rate of fire can be increased via the use of Locked and Loaded and Spray and Pray or attacking with its primary or secondary weapon. This ability has a solid duration and an average cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Cyber Demon
  • Bandito disguise

Eclipso

• Eclipso was another pick meant to push what type of character you can expect from the roster. Eclipso's main gimmick is all about attaching to allies and empowering them and jumping from host to host. As such a good amount of consideration had to be thought of on how best to do that. Eclipso has an above average health-pool and below average move-speed. A major concession to Eclipso's unique gameplay niche is that he had to be heavily balanced around struggling without a host, and suffering consequences of his host makes critical errors. That being said the general thematic fantasy of Eclipso is playing this sort of malicious symbiote, jumping from host to host .
• Role: Support
• Movement: Eclipso can fly when using his secondary weapon
• Primary Weapon: Eclipso shoots out penumbras of dark magic. He does this slowly and the bolts do low damage and don't have very good range. This attack never requires reloading
• Secondary Weapon: Eclipso shoots out a small beam that attempts to connect to the nearest enemy in a close range. This beam deals low amounts of damage and heals Eclipso for a slight amount. If Eclipso is attached to an ally while using this attack then the healing is split between Eclipso and the ally.
• Ability 1-Dark Heart: Eclipso dashes forwards a short distance. If Eclipso connects with an ally, he attaches to the ally, becoming intangible. While attached to the ally, damage is evenly split between Eclipso and the ally, effectively halving how much damage the ally takes. If the ally dies while Eclipso is attached to them he returns to his normal tangible state. Eclipso can die while attached to an ally. Eclipso can use his primary and secondary weapon while attached to an ally but cannot move on his own and is tied to the ally's movement. If this is used while attached to an ally, Eclipso dashes off of said ally and becomes tangible again while the ally heals a small amount. This ability works on a charge system and up to seven charges can be stored. This ability regains charges very slowly.
• Ability 2-Power of the Fallen: Eclipso channels dark energy. If he is not connected to an ally he gains a slight damage buff. If he uses this while attached to an ally he grants them the damage buff and the ability to fly. Certain abilities will not work in the air and cannot be used while flying. The flight and damage buff will wear off after a decent duration. This ability has a long cooldown.
• Ability 3-Black Binding: Eclipso shoots out a spike of diamonds from the ground. If this connects with a grounded enemy, they are rooted in place. If the spike hit an airborne opponent they are stunned and begin dropping. If Eclipso uses this while attached to an ally, they gain some armor. This ability has an above average cooldown.
• Ultimate-Evil Lurking in the Heart of Man: Eclipso performs a mid-range dash. If he comes into contact with an enemy, Eclipso becomes intangible and attaches himself to said enemy. While Eclipso is attached to an enemy he deals damage over time and can directly control their movement. After attaching to the enemy for a short while or if the ability is cancelled early, Eclipso dashes back out of the target, and becoming tangible once again. If the enemy Eclipso dies before he dashes out of them, Eclipso becomes tangible on the spot they died in. This ability has a very high cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Pure Diamond body
  • Ophidian King

Despero

• Despero got the spot because I wanted to throw in another tank and his psychic aspects also gave him a bit of a unique edge. It's not so unique that it's never been done before, but I think it's unique enough that it manages to justify itself. Despero is a character with a large health-pool and average base move-speed. His thematic fantasy is meant to make him feel like a powerful force that needs to be focused on to be taken down. He's kind of a hybrid character who can do a lot of different things and is a relatively flexible tank with a simple but effective kit
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Despero has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Despero fires off energy blasts from his staff, dealing damage to those it hits. It's best used in the mid-range and has a slow rate of fire, but never requires reloading. This does decent damage.
• Secondary Weapon: Despero charges up his psychic powers and then fires a swift moving blast from his third eye. If this ability connects with an enemy they take decent damage and are stunned for a short while. There is a very visible charge-up time to this attack and Despero takes extra damage if he is hit during the charge-up time. This ability necessarily has a very slow rate of fire.
• Ability 1-Untouchable: Despero projects a psychic screen for a few seconds that blocks all incoming projectiles, and enemies cannot pass through. Despero can move while using this, though he cannot attack or use abilities, and consequential can push enemies with his shield. This ability has an average cooldown.
• Ability 2-Ascension/Descent: On initial activation Despero uses his psychic powers to temporarily grant him self flight. While flying Despero can reactivate this ability to trigger Descent which causes him to rocket down to the ground and deal massive damage to any enemy he lands on top of, as well as creating a shockwave that deals minor damage and knocks all enemies hit by it back. This ability has a very long cooldown.
• Ability 3-Mental Paralysis: Despero fires a short range beam from his third eye. If the beam connects with an enemy, both Despero and the enemy are locked down in place for a short while. This ability does no damage and has a very long cooldown.
• Ultimate-Glorious Combat: Despero uses his psychic power to create an impassible dome of psychic power, projected upon himself. This dome lasts longer depending on how much combat Despero is involved in within it and can be used to keep enemies out or, to lock enemies in place with Despero. If Despero does not deal or take damage within a set duration, this ability ends. This ability has a lengthy cooldown.
• Costumes:
  • Polyphemus
  • United Planets Senator

Sgt. Rock

• Sgt. Rock is an interesting character as initially I wanted to try and make a team support character. As time went on though I moved away from it more and more and ended up deciding to cut more and more of Easy Company out his kit. Initially I also considered using Lady Blackhawk and the Blackhawks in his place but there would be a greater focus on vehicles then that could get messy and I felt like the WW2 GI aesthetic was unique enough that no one else really had it. As such I ended up going with Sgt. Rock. Ultimately I settled on a thematic fantasy for Sgt. Rock that has him very much be the normal ordinary ability who's able to go up against crazy superpowered gods with a bit of intuition, clever thinking and a whole lot of grit. Sgt. Rock has a below average health-pool and an above average base move-speed. He's meant to feel like an underdog and his abilities are deceptively simple and straightforward but if you're clever and you utilize his skills well Sgt. Rock can turn the tide against those who otherwise should have an advantage against him.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Sgt. Rock has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Sgt. Rock uses his trusty M50 Reising submachine gun to fire away at enemy combatants. This has a high rate of fire and good ammo though it does need fairly regular reloading. It does thoroughly ever so slightly below average damage and works best in the mid-range.
• Secondary Weapon: Sgt. Rock's reliable secondary weapon is a Colt semi-automatic pistol. This weapon is best used at close range but deals good damage. It does need to be reloaded fairly often all things considered.
• Ability 1-Supply Call: Sgt. Rock calls for supplies to aid him this deep outside of normal territory. He tosses a flare that then marks an area where supplies will be airdropped. The supplies will initially be in a crate that's being parachutes slowly down. The crate and the parachute are both destructible object. If the crate is destroyed, the supplies will immediately fall to the floor, enabling those beneath to restore ammo, get some armor and heal a significant amount of health. If the parachute is destroyed, then the crate will rapidly plummet to the ground, dealing damage and knocking down all enemies who come into contact with it. Upon coming into contact with a solid surface, the crate will break open, effectively destroying itself. This ability has a relatively low cooldown.
• Ability 2-Hoof it: Sgt. Rock breaks into a sprint, massively increasing his move-speed. If he jumps while in this state, he jumps extra high. Additionally Sgt. Rock can hit this ability again while sprinting to execute a slide, which causes him to go low to the ground, massively shrinking his hitbox, but also preventing him from turning for a short while. Sgt. Rock can use his primary and secondary weapon, as well as Supply Call while sprinting or sliding. After a set amount of time this ability ends. This ability has an above average cooldown.
• Ability 3-Kick it Down the Road: Sgt. Rock pulls out a barrel filled with explosives and kicks it, sending it rolling forwards. The barrel has its own physics on how it will move up and down inclines and will bounce off of walls. Any enemies hit by this low to the ground projectile while be knocked down. The barrel is a destructible object and upon being damaged enough to be destroyed, the barrel creates a massive explosion, dealing large amounts of damage to all enemies it hits. Sgt. Rock can cancel this ability before the kick to place the barrel instead. There is no limit to the number of barrels that can be placed and if a barrel is in the area of effect of the explosion of another, it will detonate as well, dealing additional damage.
• Ultimate-Easy Company: Sgt. Rock takes command of his new squad like it was the old ease company. All allies within a set radius of him, as well as he himself, gain extra health and damage so long as they remain within the aura range.
• Costumes:
  • Shipwrecked on Dinosaur Island
  • Sailor Suit

Blue Devil/Daniel Cassidy

• So this is another case of me wanting to include another tank into the roster to try and squeeze a little more into the playable roster. I'm less confident in how he plays but I do think he's at least somewhat able to be differentiated from the rest and has his own playstyle. Blue Devil has a large health-pool and good base move-speed and is generally designed around the thematic fantasy of being an aggressive tank. He has some ranged tools, but he's absolutely at his best initiating for his team and causing the enemy to focus on him, even if he can in a pinch function a little more like a traditional tank.
• Role: Tank
• Movement: Blue Devil has no unique movement options
• Primary Weapon: Blue Devil lobs a blast of blue hellfire from his hand, dealing decent damage to any enemies it hits. This attack travels relatively quickly, is best in the mid-range and never requires reloading.
• Secondary Weapon: Blue Devil stabs forwards with his trident. While it is ostensibly "melee range" the length of the weapon that extends forwards makes it have good close range reach well beyond a typical melee range, though it is thin and relatively easier to avoid then an arc if you are moving to the side. This does high damage and never requires reloading.
• Ability 1-Circle of Protection: Blue Devil spins his trident rapidly, creating a rune of protection that blocks/deletes all enemy projectiles that hit it. This does not protect against AOE effects or melee attacks. This ability is active for a significant duration but has a hefty cool down to compensate. This ability also deals no damage and is not very big, meaning it's hard to cover allies with it and Blue Devil can still be hit by enemies with excellent aiming skills. Blue Devil can use this ability while moving.
• Ability 2-Skewering Strike: Blue Devil's trident spews blue fire that acts as impromptu rocket propulsion, causing Blue Devil to swiftly shoot forwards with the skewer outstretched. This ability travels in a straight line and will continue until it hits a solid object. Any enemies hit by this ability are dragged along with Blue Devil. Blue Devil can be attacked and killed while this ability is active and this ability has an above average cooldown.
• Ability 3-Blue Blazes: Blue Devil wreaths himself in blue fire, granting him a bit of armor. After a set duration or when the armor is destroyed, Blue Devil unleashes a fiery blue explosion that causes him to lose all of his armor and deals damage over time to the enemy. This ability has a decent cooldown.
• Ultimate-Devil's Domain: Blue Devil sets fire to the ground, causing it to glow bright blue. Allies in the zone of effect are slowly healed over time while enemies slowly take damage over time.
• Costumes:
  • Medieval Warrior
  • Hollywood Superstar

Gizmo

• So this pick was real struggle for me as I wanted one last pick that would feel really unique. I also didn't want another magic related character because I'd made a lot of those picks prior to this point. I also didn't want to go back and pick a relatively big name or someone whom I'd scrapped, mostly since I felt this would lead to a more interesting and creative roster. Ultimately I actually felt Gizmo might be a good pick. Gizmo's known to fans of the 2005 cartoon but he's not incredibly popular or really all that big of a deal. Furthermore he's got weird tech capabilities that don't align perfectly with other tech based characters already included and there's a lot of potential beyond that. Gizmo has a large base health-pool and a good base move-speed. He also has a weird as hell hitbox, with his body being very small, but the four tentacles coming out of his backpack also counting as hitboxes. Additionally Gizmo's backpack functions like his head in that if an enemy gets behind him and shoot it, he takes headshot damage. Gizmo's thematic fantasy is kind of meant to be riding the line between being a genius and "random bullshit go!", in that he's got a ton of tools, but they are very weird and often require a specialist to make the best possible use of.
• Role: Support
• Movement: Gizmo can fly for limited periods of time, retracting his claws into his back pack and actively shrinking his hitbox. Gizmo flies incredibly quickly. Additionally Gizmo can glide, distending his clawed tentacles and turning them into propellers, shifting those parts of his hitbox above his body. Enemies who touch the rotors of his propellers while he is gliding will take damage. Gizmo can wall-climb and wall-cling, and doing so causes the tentacles attached to his body to move, potentially shifting his hitbox.
• Primary Weapon: Gizmo makes use of a shoulder mounted blaster pods to fire quick low damage damage small lasers. These have a high rate of fire and can hit things really far away but can overheat if Gizmo fires them for too long without stopping and generally don't have incredible accuracy. If they overheat then Gizmo needs to wait a bit before being able to use them again but the closer the pods are to overheating, the more damage every shot does. Gizmo can use his abilities and his primary weapon at the same time. Gizmo's heat level is unaffected by switching weapons and fades after not using his primary weapon for a little bit.
• Secondary Weapon: Gizmo unleashes an extra set of tentacles from his backpack, and these ones have buzzsaws attached to their ends. These buzzsaws passively damage any enemies who touch them. Gizmo can then actively attack by extending these tentacles forwards, with each tentacle extending independently of one another, meaning if Gizmo turns quickly he can have each tentacle extend in a different direction. Gizmo can use his abilities and his secondary weapon at the same time. Gizmo can switch to his primary weapon and fire while the tentacles are extending outwards and then switch back before they retract to prevent ever putting away his buzzsaws and hypothetically maximizing his damage.
• Ability 1-External Decoy Defense System: Gizmo unleashes a swarm of drones that fly around him semi-randomly in circle. These drones explode upon getting hit by any attack or damaging ability and can block enemy attacks, ally attacks and even Gizmo's own attacks. Upon being destroyed these drones drop small amounts of armor which both allies and enemies can pick up and benefit from. Gizmo can then use this ability again to "fire" the drones, by making them move in a straight line. If the drones reach another character they will then circle that character instead. Gizmo can only have one set of drones out at a time, this ability deals no damage and has a heft cooldown.
• Ability 2-Scuzzbombs: Gizmo lobs a bomb that unleashes a sticky gooey substance on whatever solid surface it hits, lightly damaging enemies in the explosion and slowing all enemies who try to move through the gunk. If Gizmo hits an airborne opponent with this then they are bound by the gooey substance and fall until they next take damage or a short while passes. If this ability is used in the air, Gizmo drops the bomb directly below him. This ability has a low cooldown but the gunk eventually fades away automatically.
• Ability 3-Electroweb Netting: Gizmo fires out a projectile that then after a few moments expands into a massive spider web made of lightning. The projectile speed increases the more distance it travels. While the projectile has not expanded, it's incredibly slow, but deals massive damage to any enemy it passes through. While it's expanded, it does next to know damage, but stuns any enemy it passes through. This ability has a relatively high cooldown and is big enough to hit multiple enemies if they group too closely together.
• Ultimate-Neural Hacking Bug: Gizmo fires a small, very fast dart at an opponent. This projectile fast unlimited range but fades upon coming into contact with anything. If the dart connects with an enemy, then Gizmo gets to hack their nerves. While the enemy is "hacked" Gizmo can freely invert their controls. Gizmo can invert and un-invert their controls as many times as he likes while the enemy is "hacked". This ability has a massive cooldown and the "hacked" status only lasts for a decent but not incredible amount of time.
• Costumes:
  • Creepy Ventriloquists doll
  • Lawn Gnome

Playable Maps
So I mentioned earlier that there were broadly three game modes I considered interesting for this hypothetical game, though now I'll be naming them "payload", "control point" and "base defense". In "payload" one team attempts to escort a payload to a destination while the other attempts to stop them. In "control point" both teams attempt to capture marked areas on the map, by being the only team within them. These captured points then generate points so long as they are under that teams control but the opposing team can steal the point by standing on it instead. The last one "base defense", has each team randomly spawning minions. These minions then take one of three routes to the enemy base. Your goal is to escort/keep alive as many of your team's minions to reach the enemies base, while also preventing the enemy from getting their minions into your base.

As part of the thought exercise, I came up with three maps for each potential game mode. I won't be describing each map in full, but I'll give a little conceit about each one narratively, and maybe describe some basic bare bones element of each. Additionally in selecting these maps, I tried to stick to maps with ties to different parts of the DC universe without too much overlap and to give some link to a fairly big name hero while also using them to highlight characters who didn't make the initial roster. Without further ado here are the map ideas.

Themyscira: Themyscira is a Payload map. Ares has come up with a scheme to breach the gates to the underworld on Themyscira in order to resurrect warriors for some coming crisis and has recruited individuals to help. Hades meanwhile refuses to aid the god of war or help in the ensuing crisis and so has recruited individuals to guard his gates.

The "payload" being escorted is a golem of sorts with a key to the gates of the underworld. The situation is meant to be morally ambiguous such that heroes and villains could be fighting for both sides. On the one hand Ares is ostensibly trying to help prevent an oncoming crisis while Hades actively prevents aid from coming, and on the other, Ares is clearly not the most trustworthy fellow and loves creating unnecessary conflict, making it suspicious that it might be some kind of scheme leading to more damage later down the line.

Ares and Hades are the two commentators on this map with the two of them constantly bickering and bantering.

The broad path that it's meant to take is traveling through is to go from the tropical island beaches, to the slightly open city/settlement near the palace, to the catacombs beneath the palace and into the gates to the underworld. The map is meant to be relatively large with a lot of open space for fliers to move around freely in. The narrative fiat for the invisible boundary is that the Greek gods have created a barrier to contain the fighting between these two sides

Xebel: Xebel is a Payload map. Amanda Waller has lead a team to steal Atlantean artifacts from the city. Oceanmaster meanwhile wants to stop the intruders from getting away with stealing from his people and has rallied people to stop them.

The "payload" being escorted is a bunch of Atlantean artifacts. Neither Oceanmaster nor Amanda Waller are straightforward "good guys" as Oceanmaster's often a villain who wants to cause problems but Amanda Waller very clearly stole something without asking and she wasn't stealing from people who are as clearly villainous as Oceanmaster. It's meant to be ambiguous so that heroes and villains could fight for both sides.

There are four commentators for this map, with Oceanmaster and Hila encouraging the defense and condemning the team stealing the artifacts, while Amanda Waller and Rick Flag are telling the team that's aiding in stealing the artifacts that they need to get the job done and reminding them that this is necessary to face whatever is to come.

The broad path that it's meant to take is to mostly just move through the somewhat alien city of Xebel. There are lots of buildings and bridges and structures and places for people to acrobatically move around. The map is meant to be decently sized but to have a lot of destroyable structures and objects to interact with and bounce off of. The narrative fiat for the invisible boundary is that members of the Suicide Squad, most notably the Thinker, have set up a barrier to keep out water to allow you to more easily operate in there.

Project Cadmus: Project Cadmus is the last of the Payload maps. In Project Cadmus, the Brain and Monsieur Mallah have recruited one side to steal genetic samples that they can then use to aid in a coming crisis. At the same time Dabney Donovan has brought in another side to prevent them from stealing the samples he was using for his experiments.

The "payload" being escorted here is a cart filled with genetic samples that would allow someone to create genetically enhanced individuals. Once again this is an ambiguous situation where heroes and villains can be aiding both sides as one side is helping a supervillain steal something for the greater good, while the other side is preventing a crime, but potentially preventing the genetic material from being used for anything good even if it's being used legally.

There are three commentators for this map. Most of the time the Brain and Mallah talk to one another and remark about the plan, egging on the side pushing the payload to get things done. On the other side Dabney Donovan will occasionally barge in and yell about needing to get things done. Dabney and the Brain will occasionally banter and ultimately call each other scientific hacks and engage in one-upsmanship.

The broad path it's meant to take is going from the large weird bio-chambers deep in the bottom of Project Cadmus, to the more classically techy and scientific upper levels of Cadmus until the payload reaches the exist. This is meant to be a tight and congested map with a good number of opportunity for flanks and a lot of small tunnels. It'll be a little more difficult for flying characters to move through the natural chokepoints if the enemy controls them. Lastly the narrative fiat for certain areas being inaccessible is Dubbilex and the genomorphs using their psychic powers to create barriers you can't pass through.

Kandor: Kandor is a Control Point map. Brainiac has teleported a bunch of individuals into Kandor in an attempt to study what would happen if two sides were to fight to assist his modelling capabilities as he prepares to exploit the coming chaos. However by seizing control of a few key stations, one side can get themselves free.

Brainiac is the one commentator on this match, generally being curious and enjoying combat, but also egging on whichever side is losing to keep the other side from escaping. He starts off cool calm and collected but the closer one side gets to escaping, the more opposed to them Brainiac becomes and the more desperate and frazzled he gets.

Kandor's meant to have a lot of big skyscrapers, a few floating platforms and streets and buildings that people can enter. It's not a huge map but it should be decently sized. The general aesthetic is it being very shiny and gleaming and hopeful seeming. The narrative fiat for why there are invisible barriers preventing escape is that Brainiac has locked down this area of Kandor to run his experiment in.

The Rock of Eternity: The Rock of Eternity is Control Point map. The basic rundown is that for some reason a lot of people have been teleported into the Rock. One side organized by Sivana, claims that Mr. Mind is invading in order to unleash the Seven Deadly Sins. Mr. Mind meanwhile claims that it's actually Sivana invading to free the Seven Deadly Sins. Both sides are leading their champions to try and get them to stop the other, ostensibly by conducting a ritual at key points.

Mr. Mind and Dr. Sivana are the two commentators here but you only hear one side, randomly getting one at the start of the amtch and then sticking with them. Sivana acts like a crazed mad scientist, and Mister Mind speaks with a very villainous aggressive affect but both are meant to ultimately be kind of goofy more than anything else.

The Rock of Eternity is relatively small with a lot of cosmic nonsense and big stone elements. Each of the capture points is by some statutes of the Deadly Sins and it might be fun to have pit at the very bottom of the map with the giant dragon known as the Three Faces of Evil in it. The narrative fiat for not being able to leave is left over enchantments by the Wizard.

House of Mystery: The House of Mystery is a Control Point map. A bunch of individuals have been warped into the House of Mystery and are desperately racing to avoid getting trapped in there, coming to blow with the other team due to not being able to quickly communicate, being on a clock, and needing to do rituals in the same places.

Cain narrates what's going on with a very droll and dry sort of wit, often adding little touches of opinion to his feelings about the match in general.

The House of Mystery cannot exist in reality, as it's got a central hub area that is the house's foyer, with numerous doors adjacent to it, and then said doors lead to radically different environments, ranging from a portion of a castle Camelot, to a field in the Fairylands, to the edge of an active volcano, and more all without necessarily complying with geographic reality and it's doors that connect all these separate areas/biomes. The narrative fiat for areas being blocked of is Cain basically using his powers to ensure that the "story" stays on track.

Warworld: Warworld is a Base Defense map. The basics is that Mongul is willing to give a way a powerful weapon to whichever team entertains him more by winning his game. Seeing no other options, the teams are forced to compete against each other in the gladiatorial event.

Mongul narrates the whole thing, taking up the presence as this very hammy wrestling announcer type of character. At the same time the minions consist of alien gladiators, likely a bunch of Qwardians since I feel like they fit this well.

Warworld would be a big mostly open arena with a few large structures dotting it and cover sprinkled throughout the map as part of the part of the futuristic "games" normally played there. I'm thinking an aesthetic like the Death Star mixed with a Roman colosseum with elements of a baseball game and a big Broadway musical with a lot of props. The narrative fiat for keeping everything contained is Mongul setting things up so that the contest is that way to keep things "fair".

Gorilla City: Gorilla city is a Base Defense map. the basics is that one side is aiding Gorilla Grodd's attempted revolution, in order to stir the city into action, while the other side works with Solovar to keep things from going too out of control. It's not especially deep but it gives a solid enough conflict.

Grodd and Solovar respectively give commentary on the happenings of the game, with Grodd giving very Grodd and bombastic speeches about his new order, and Solovar stubbornly resisting. The minions for this would obviously be gorillas, either on Grodd's side or Solovar's.

In terms of appearance, the city offers some nice tight areas and plenty of structures to bounce off of and move around. I personally feel like working in some kind of fun ancient empire aesthetic might be nice. I kind of want to jump to Mesoamerican style stuff since that can keep the jungle elements and isn't too present in DC at large, but Gorilla city is in Africa some maybe something more afro-futurist would be better. Regardless the general sense is that the map should be broadly symmetrical with three mostly open paths between one big base and another, and a lot of crowded buildings and statues and stuff, between and around those open lanes. The narrative fiat for why there are boundaries that can't be crossed is that the Flash and Reverse Flash are fighting, racing around the city and that's releasing enough Speed-Force energy that it's forming a physical boundary of sorts.

League of Assassins Headquarters: The League of Assassins Headquarters is a Base Defense map. The basics of the situation is that Ra's al Ghul has recently died. Talia al Ghul wants to resurrect Ra's out of familial loyalty and argues that his skill and expertise will aid in coming conflicts. Nyssa al Ghul meanwhile thinks that Ra's al Ghul is a monster and his resurrection should be stopped. The two sides are fighting to remove the other from power and get solid enough control to either use or block access to the use of a Lazarus pit.

Nyssa al Ghul and Talia al Ghul commentate on this map. They don't interact with one another and whichever one you randomly get selected for talks to you and tells you stuff. As for the minions on this map, it's assassins from the League of Assassins with each of the Al Ghul sisters getting one color.

In terms of appearance I imagine that this is a very vertical map, with broadly three layers to this snowy mountain fortress. The top most layer is the fortress itself and its walls and towers. The second level is the ground floor which consists of a wide open courtyard from which you can freely access all the levels and reach most parts of the map, but it also has relatively little cover, and two hallways that form two of the lanes of this map that minions move through. The lowest level is the catacombs beneath the ground floor, which contains a lot of chokepoints and tight areas and at the very bottom has a Lazarus Pit. This lowest level contains the last of the lanes the minions move through. The narrative fiat of why there are blocked off area is Rama Kushna has intervened on behalf of someone else to block off these areas to prevent both sides from bringing about their full power and causing a massive death toll to occur.

General Narrative Excuse for the Game
So this is a lot of the fiddly details and characters and maps and stuff and after the massive amount of words, I figure I ought to give what I think would be a solid enough basic overarching story for this game. It's by no means incredible but it's serviceable and can easily set up for cool moments and events without too much complication and loosely justifies why the game is playing the way it is.

The general overarching narrative that I think would work well is that the Lords of Chaos and Order were fighting and things escalated. Thanks to the massive amounts of magic that was thrown around, the timestream and the multiverse was broken, causing things to get isolated and mixed and messed up. Additionally various evil entities are seeking to exploit the situation to bring about their own schemes into motion to reshape all of existence as they see fit.

Dr. Fate, empowered by Nabu's full might, has been summoning heroes across the multiverse to try and fix reality, but plenty of other actors have caught onto this trick and are using other heroes summoned from all across space and time to try and prevent him from achieving his goals. It's a massive battle like never seen before with all of reality at stake.

Seasonal Events
So most hero shooters (at least as far as I know), generally have some kind of seasonal events. As such I figured I'd toss out some basic game mode ideas and a handful of what I think are standout skin ideas for a few different seasons/holidays to try and make things interesting. As a general rule of thumb I tried not to repeat seasonal skins (if Batman got a skin in one season, I tried not to give him any more in the rest and leave some for other characters). Additionally while a lot of the game mode ideas require new maps, I didn't really go into what those maps would be or look like.

Christmas/Winter
So broadly speaking I know a lot of corporations like to be generically inclusive by making things "winter" related, and I've definitely got some ideas that could work for that but I also wanted to throw out some ideas that were specifically tied to actual holidays. In terms of game modes there's two that I think could work pretty well.

The first is admittedly a little lame, but Santa Claus is a DC comics character. The basic idea is that it's a variation on classic payload games. Instead of the regular payload, instead it's Santa Claus. The main modification is that if the defending team can get close enough to touch the payload, they steal a present. The less presents there are, the slower the payload moves until it outright stops. Conversely the players moving the payload can pick up scattered presents to speed up the payload. Upon being killed all the presents that character was carrying are dropped where they died.

The game mode probably would be really difficult to balance but I can see it being goofy fun and it might change the dynamic a bit as killing certain members of the opposite team suddenly got a lot more important and you potentially need to hold ground more often.

The second gameplay idea also isn't revolutionary but it's a lot easier to implement and you can give it a little bit of narrative fiat (I've used that phrase so much). The basic premise is that [Insert villain with ice powers here] managed to gain incredible powers for a short while freezing over a bunch of areas. The heroes stopped them but the effects of their actions remain and now the floors in certain maps all have ice physics. Again I don't think this is a perfect idea, and it'll affect some characters way more than others, but I think it could be some goofy one off holiday fun.

As for the skins, I'm going to try and give five specific examples here that I think are neat conceptually and also talk about some of the easy generic and uninteresting stuff. With winter/Christmas, you could pretty easily stick a Santa hat on a character, make their outfit red with white fur trimming and call it a day as a Christmas skin. Likewise you could go with blues or whites to make something vaguely ice or snow themed and attempt to sell that. I'm going to try and give 3 skins with a little more pizazz than that.

Lastly a skin that was borderline was giving Harley a Hannukah sweater or something. Broadly speaking in the comics Harley's Jewish sometimes when the writer remembers and barely ever when the reader could see it. The official explanation is that Harley Quinn's Christian on one side of her family and Jewish on the other, but to me that rings really hollow when I can find DC actively selling Harley Quinn Christmas or Easter merch, and the closest thing I can find to Harley Quinn doing anything related to a Jewish holiday is holding a chanukiah in the Harley Quinn show and a comics panel where she's got this weird chanukiah antler thing because she's combining Hannukah and Christmas. It rings really hollow that DC keeps trying to say that Harley Quinn's Jewish, and then constantly show her only doing stuff related to christian holidays because that sells better. Compare this to Katherine Kane who's also arbitrarily Jewish and their depiction is a little more tasteful where they don't try to tell me that a character is totally Jewish, and then try to sell you Christmas and Easter merch of them pretty consistently. It's not as outright tasteless as when they sometimes make Penguin a borderline antisemitic caricature, but it's not super pleasant either.

With that little rant about Harley Quinn as a Jewish character out of the way, here are the three skins I think would be incredible for a winter/Christmas event.

• Santa Claus Jonah Hex: I know I opened this section talking about how to easily and lazily do christmas skins, but I think Jonah Hex is a natural fit. Beyond just being able to be put into the suit, Jonah Hex has a horse. Turning the General to Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer is a slam dunk ability on its own. Turn his tomahawk into a candy cane, and his shot gun into a christmas cracker and you've got what I think is an excellent and really fun skin.
• Frosty Snowman Clayface: Clayface is likely to be a really difficult character to make skins for that aren't just pallet swaps. He's naturally goopy enough that you can't really give him shirts or pants as part of a costume. However a sort of "evil Frosty the snowman" skin is fun and works well as all the accessories can add to it pretty easily. Give him a carrot nose, a top has, a red scarf and black buttons on his chest and you've got the outfit and you can turn the "clay" to "snow" by turning it from brown to white. I think this is a very solid idea
• Elf on Strike Gizmo: Gizmo's a weird tiny little man, and in this case that makes him a natural fit for a sort of "elf" type of character. That being said I think rather than trying to make him jolly, you can do something cool beyond just giving him a different outfit. Turn Gizmo's backpack into a present and the tentacles that come out as being made out of not-Legos, have his buzzsaws become sparklers and turn the drones into toy planes while his bombs spray out tinsel and Christmas lights rather than goo. I think the idea of an elf who's snapped and gone rogue is pretty fun and Gizmo kind of nails that.

Valentines Day
I don't know how often this is a thing in big online multiplayer live services, but this seems like a pretty solid and easy marketing opportunity. I again have two ideas for a game mode, with one being having some sort of narrative/justification to it, while the other doesn't.

The first game mode idea is one I actually came up with a snazzy name for "Soulmates" and it is the one I didn't really think of even a narrative fig leaf for. The basic premise is that each member of the team is paired with a member of the enemy team. Only pairs can deal damage to one another initially. If one of the paired opponents kills the other, they are able to hurt all of the enemies as long as the enemy they are paired with has not respawned. I don't think it would be balanced and I could see it potentially getting annoying, but I think it might be a lot of fun.

The other idea that I think could work would be a Star Sapphire event. The basic premise would be that some version of the Predator (the entity governing love as part of the emotional spectrum) has been driven crazy and in turn it has driven the Star Sapphire Corps crazy. As such they're actively capturing anyone and everyone with no rhyme or reason. Gameplay is largely the same but now Star Sapphire's randomly spawn and start roaming the map. If you enter the light emitted by their ring, the Star Sapphire will begin attempting to encase you in crystal. If you don't get out in time or finish off the Star Sapphire encases you in crystal. To prevent there from being potential moments where you just don't get to play the game for large chunks of time, if you are encased in crystal for to long, you are teleported into space and instantly die. That being said allies can free you from being encased by destroying the crystal, in which case you are healed back to full. It's a little clunky but I think it's a fun game mode that nominally ties to the love theme through its narrative justification.

Now as for the skins there's a few things that could be done for really cheap easy ones. Stick the character in evening-wear, as though they're about to go on a date they're really looking forward to. Alternatively you can put the characters in something pink and frilly with a lot of hearts on it. That's generally the easy way to do something like this. With DC you've got the extra option of "make 'em a Star Sapphire" and boom that's a third easy way for nominally on theme skins. Here though are three skins I think would be both in theme and even more interesting.

• Bride Catwoman: So in general DC likes pairing Batman and Catwoman and having them get married and they have done so in many continuities (the OG Huntress was their kid, Helena Wayne). On top of that DC comics teased the two of them actually getting married in the mainline continuity. They admittedly nearly immediately pulled the rug out from under that idea but it's the thought that counts I guess. Admittedly an actual dress probably wouldn't work well on Catwoman, due to her being animated/rigged wearing pants and the game being third person and her having a wall-climb, but a torn or shortened version of the wedding dress with leggings might work well and could be fun to implement
• Archer of Eros Green Arrow: I couldn't call this "Cupid" because that's an actual Green Arrow villain. That being said Eros/what became Cupid in pop culture, is strongly associated with Valentines day and he's an archer guy. I wouldn't make Green Arrow a baby or anything but I think you could do some fun on-theme fanservice with a skin like this, having Green Arrow go shirtless and stylizing him to look like a Greek god of sorts. I think it's a solid skin idea
• Soulmate Eclipso: This is probably the weakest of my three ideas, but I still think it's really fun. In terms of costume design it Eclipso ought to be made to look like a sort of prototypical romance novel hero in a conventionally attractive sense, and when he "attaches" to someone he glows bright pink and gives a cheesy pick-up line and instead of throwing penumbras of darkness he throws bright glowing hearts. Additionally this likely would be difficult to implement well but I think it might be fun to have little cartoon hearts superimpose themselves over the eyes of whoever he's attached to as a fun bonus. If he grants an ally flight, they're more literally "floating on cloud nine" as heart effects carry them into the air. It's kind of Valentine's slop taken up to eleven and hopefully kind of fun for it.

Spring/Easter
So again I don't know if game companies really do easter events. I'll say that I'm mostly including it because it did make one of the two game mode ideas make a fair bit of sense. Once more I was able to give some in-universe narrative justification for one game mode and not the other.

The first game mode does have this little bit of narrative justification. The basic premise is that Mr. Mxyzptlk feels everyone is taking things too seriously. As such he's here to make people have some fun. In order to accomplish this, Mr. Mxyzptlk has hidden crucial data in easter eggs and scattered them across a bunch of different easter eggs. Both teams goal is then to gather as many hidden easter eggs and get them back to their base. If they are killed then they drop whatever they were carrying. As such it's a race to see who can collect the most eggs in that period of time.

The second game mode is a weird one, where everyone is forced to play as Poison Ivy. In this game mode, all of the limitations that normally exist on the plants Poison Ivy can make, including the flower she uses for movement, are removed and she's permanently in the state her ultimate ability places her in. There is a time limit and this takes place in a small map, but the team that has the most plants when the time limit is reached wins the game.

Now onto the costumes. I struggled a fair bit with coming up with spring themed skins. Easter does give you the easy option option of "make them look like a rabbit" but that's generally not especially interesting. You can also go pretty generic with green clothing and get on theme but it's actually kind of tricky to get right. Here are the three ideas I thought were the most solid.

• Hanami Kimono Katana: Hanami is a traditional Japanese activity involving viewing the blooming/falling of flowers, generally cherry blossoms IIRC, and it is seasonal for the most part to the spring. Having Katana don a pink kimono with a falling flower petal motif might be fun. You'd almost certainly have to cheat a bit as it couldn't be a proper kimono dress (Katana has visible legs meaning she'd need new animations and can wall-run and wall-jump so she almost certainly needs to have animations that work best with her legs not in a dress), but combining it with some kind of hakama pants and getting it more on the aesthetic I think would work fine enough.
• Blooming Cyborg: This one might be a stretch but the idea is to turn Cyborg's mechanical parts into wooden or nature-esque parts. From there turn his energy blasts green, his jet pack into propellers/turbines that blast out wind, make his repair drone into a bird that chirps and flies, and his missiles into a bundle of seeds that explode into flowers on impact. I think that's pretty solid.
• Flower Power Golden Glider: This last one is again a weaker one of mine but I think giving Golden Glider a sort of groovy hippie "flower power" aesthetic and turning her gold/ice effects into flowers and things blooming is a solid little skin idea. It's not revolutionary and the tendrils are kind of weird, but I think it works well enough as a spring skin and is generally a solid idea.

Summer
Now with summer I really struggled. I again had two ideas for possible game modes, but I didn't love either of them and I couldn't come up with a narrative fiat for either of them that I really likes all that much.

The first game mode is something I like to call "rising tide" where normal maps have their lower levels submerged under a set amount some liquid that can't be entered into without instantly dying. From there you have to fight exclusively on top of things and on the occasional floating platform. It's an idea but the summer theming is tenuous and honestly it really doesn't sound that fun to me.

The second idea though is one I like way more and am pretty proud of. I call it "Sandcastle Showdown". Each team has a massive sandcastle that is made out of a destructible objects. Generally the destructible parts of the sandcastle has a lot of health. The goal of the game then is to destroy the enemy team's sand castle before they can destroy yours. I think it's fun, changes the game in a really unique way and it's got a really strong bit of summer theming.

Now with summer skins there are kind of two ways to go with it. The first and one a lot of games do, is sticking the characters in swimsuits. You can get a lot of character out of this kind of choice and it's fanservice that generally sells pretty well so it's often incorporated. There's a lot that could be done with just that but I hopefully came up with three ideas that are different and interesting and still summer themed.

• Grillmaster Blue Devil: Summer barbeques might not be universal but they are a thing and there is at least some association. Plus with his big trident that you can easily stick some sausages on, and the fire he throws around, this feels like a natural fit. Give him some sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt, an apron with some cheesy line on it, shorts and a sandals and you've got a fun summer skin.
• Statue of Liberty Zatanna: It's admittedly a little cheap but US independence day AKA the 4th of July does occur and is associated with summer. The easy way out would be plastering an American flag motif all over an outfit but this feels like a fun slightly silly way to achieve a similar thing. Turning her completely green, giving her a book to hold and a toga to wear (which might require redoing some animations but there wouldn't be any gameplay elements preventing these new animations from feeling good), turning her hat into a pointed grown and her wand into a torch means all the elements can line up one to one. I think it's really solid.
• Family Vacation Nuclear Family: So riffing on summer vacation in a different way, I thought it might be fun to draw on the idea of "summer vacation" by having the Nuclear family dress in those similar to that seen of the family in National Lampoon's Vacation. In this case Dad wears a burgundy polo and blue jeans with white sneakers and a watch; Mom wears a white collared button up with blue plaid and dark jeans; Biff wears a blue collared shirt with a white stripe on it, khaki cargo pants and sneakers; Sis wears a yellow short-sleeved t-shirts, white capri pants and sneakers; Brat wears a baseball cap, an obnoxiously loud plaid shirt and brown cargo shorts; and dog is a golden retriever. I know that's a lot as it's essentially six costumes in one but I think it's a solid "summer vacation" based idea that somewhat modernizes the Nuclear Family but never fully steps them out of "slightly uncanny sitcom family".

Fall/Halloween
I'll be honest this is just Halloween. It's also the thing I had the easiest time coming up with ideas for it and I had the most fun with it. I once more came up with two game mode ideas but this time for once I actually had a bit of a narrative explanation for both game modes and I think they are two of my stronger ideas.

The first game mode is tentatively called "From Blackest Night". It's a PvE event. Nekron has seen the chaos unleashed by the shattering of all timelines and universes and seeks to use the opportunity to end all life everywhere all at once. As such he's raised a massive army of Black Lanterns to annihilate all life in existence. Dr. Fate then sends your team to prevent this possible apocalypse. The basics of the game mode is that Nekron spawns wave after wave of zombies that are non-playable characters. Eventually he starts summoning NPC versions of playable characters but with a Black Lantern skin. The goal is to prevent the Black Lanterns from dealing too much damage to a base you're protecting, and keeping the tide of the undead contained.

The second game mode doesn't have a name but also deals with horror aspects. Basically the premise is that all of the chaos caused has allowed multiple versions of Starro to grow unchecked to massive size. As such the heroes need to cull some of them to prevent Starro from overrunning everything with his drones and mind control. However when the heroes get there they find a second team there as well. Unable to tell if the second team has been compromised and sensing violence, the team must fight fight off the enemy team and slay Starro. The basic premise of the game mode is that it's a race between the two teams to take down Starro. You can either focus on finishing off Starro, or sabotage the enemy team by attacking them.

As for costumes, the easy options both kind of tie back to these two events. You can make a Black Lantern version of basically any character for a good Halloween event skin, or make any hero be possessed by a face-hugging Starro drone in order to similarly fulfill a creepy vibe. As such the three skins I'm going to be suggesting are hopefully going to be slightly more specific and unique to one character.

• Pumpkin-head Red Hood: Red Hood has a naturally rounded head with not a ton of feature to it. You could pretty easily replace his head with a pumpkin without much issue. Give him an outfit more akin to the stereotypical headless horseman legend and maybe make his guns look more like something from the 1700s and I think you've got a pretty solid spooky skin.
• Countess Kapatelis Silver Swan: This skin would probably be hell to reanimate as the Silver Swan's bird wings would need to be changed to bat wings and probably reanimated. The basic idea is to recontextualize Silver Swan as a vampire with the double breasted red jacket, black high collar cape and white cravat giving her a classic Bela Lugosi Dracula look, and bat wings in place of her bird wings. You'd probably also want to make her hair black and give her fangs as well, while making her paler. Additionally all of the abilities that involved razor sharp feathers probably need to be recontextualized but that can be done by making them into daggers of blood. I think that solidly works to take a character very far from a traditional vampire aesthetic and move them solidly into it.
• Wicked Witch Circe: It's not exactly a ground breaking idea, but Circe is already a witch of some stripe and so she can easily be pushed into a "wicked witch" costume with the black dress, pointy hat and green skin. Have the Beastiamorph ability turn someone into one that looks like a flying monkey or a black cat and I think this is a really solid skin idea, if one that's not too unique.

Potential future characters for Season Passes
So this is an absolutely last minute thing but I thought it would be fun to include. Most hero shooters are live services of some kind and so I thought it would be fun to throw out some ideas on characters that could be added over the course of a season. I will say that I did not give the characters full kits and these are very much just general ideas.

I will say that I did have some new rules and limitations to this. For each "season" of characters added, I would be adding six characters, all of which shared some theme or overarching connection. I did not have to worry about overlapping thematic at all as was free to choose as I pleased, but I did try to find at least one character who could fill each class within each group of six. Additionally the first character, and the last character, both had to be ones I thought would get people excited to see in the game, while the middle picks could be more just ones I wanted because I liked them. Ultimately I came up with six different seasonal expansions.

Sidekicks on the Scene
So this group was basically a way to include sidekicks considering I think the original roster has all of one with Red Hood, and even that's a bit of a stretch. Since I no longer had to worry about overlapping thematics I was free to bring in a lot of characters who I'd previously locked myself off from choosing.

• Nightwing/Dick Grayson: I think Nightwing is popular and as arguably the first and most iconic sidekick of all time I think he'd be good for setting the tone and building hype as to how this could plug holes in my initial roster that people want to be filled. Nightwing would be an acrobatic character with a good amount of movement options and probably use his escrima sticks and batarangs as his weapons. I can see him slotting into the damage type roll, fitting into the sort of stealthy ambushing playmaker archetype a bit like Batman does.
• Batgirl/Barbara Gordon: Barbara's also kind of an iconic sidekick and she's got a fun techy side to her. I think it'd be fun to lean a bit more into her Oracle side and make her a support style character. Maybe make her have an ability involving a drone she can remotely pilots while she herself turns invisible? Have it be a way to disable the many traps characters can place that you otherwise might not see? I think it'd be a lot of fun and it would be nice to have her play distinctly differently despite still being a bat.
• Yara Flor: I don't know a ton about Yara as a character and she's pretty new. I do know she has a cool sword, a magic lasso and can shoot arrows. I think she also just generally has Wonder Woman's powers. That's enough to make a kit out of, though there might be some overlap with others. Personally while Donna or Cassie might be cool, I figured it'd be more fun to throw one curveball for the pack considering most of my picks are going to be pretty obvious "yeah of course he picked this character" type stuff. I also think the fact that Yara generally doesn't use a shield might make her better to tune a bit more aggressively than Wonder Woman. She'd land somewhere between damage and tank and probably only once a kit manifests would I say "I think she fits this role better".
• Aqualad/Kaldur: Kaldur's probably the most popular Aquaman sidekick and is I think the only character to make the jump from Young Justice to mainline continuity. While his water bearer weapons weren't unique enough that I felt I could give him a spot, when Aquaman's already doing water stuff and three separate lanterns were doing construct stuff, I think he could make a fun tank. Give him the stereotypical/classic shield ability, have him switch between mid-range whips and close range maces and some kind of stun mixed into the kit seems like a solid start for a practical tank. He may end up with mobility issues but maybe something involving a grappling tether might solve that.
• Arsenal/Roy Harper: This is a pick not made entirely in isolation, it was influenced by a later pick, but I thought Roy was fun enough to pick. He is another archer, but he's also got the robot hand for additional gun stuff and fodder for abilities. I figure he'd pretty much have to be in the damage role and taking up a decent sniper role but probably a little more mobile and with more close range agressive options than Green Arrow.
• Supergirl/Kara Zor-El: My pick of who to close this season with. She's really iconic and I think she's probably the most popular sidekick in DC as she regularly gets her own books and shows up in other media. My Adventures with Superman is also really new and has only made her more popular I think in the current day and age. I wanted to include Supergirl into the roster initially, but Superman made that pretty hard. I'll say that I do actually think it might be fun to have the two play pretty differently. Have Kara be faster and more offense oriented than Kal but also have her have less overall durability and less crowd control potential.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
So this one is kind of the "all mercenaries and bounty hunters" season. This actually stemmed from me wanting to include both Deathstroke and Lobo but cutting them from the initial roster (Lobo due to struggles with completing his kit, Deathstroke due to similarities with Deadshot and not doing too much to really sell himself as a "must have" from a gameplay perspective). As such the theme was settled on since it can get them both.

• Lobo: Lobo's loud and a character with a lot of personality. His primary weapon is a space shotgun of some kind that lets him get up close and personal and his secondary weapon is the chains that are wrapped around his fist that he can extend to hit mid-range. I know I want to include his space-hog somewhere in his kit, maybe as an initiation and/or crowd control tool? I also know it's cheesy but I think having him take a smoke that and accelerating his healing even further might be fun. I think Lobo would be a tank, but I struggled to get him four abilities
• Plastique: She brings the boom. As one of the big bomb experts in the DC universe with the ability to generate explosions from her body there's a lot that could be done. The two ideas I had where "it might be fun to finally give a character a rocket launcher" and having a set number of explosive charges that a character could use to fling themselves around to move acrobatically through the air might be fun. It's not a complete kit but it's something that can be further worked on. Almost certainly filling the damage role.
• Mirror Master/Evan McCulloch: So I like Mirror Master a lot and I know that the second Mirror Master (Evan) worked as a professional hitman/mercenary, which means he qualifies for this and as such I took the opportunity. I think between lasers, mirror illusions and being able to move through the mirror dimension there's a pretty good kit in play there. That being said I kind of feel like he could be a solid support, using mirrors he lays down to swiftly move to a lot of places including allies to back them up, effectively making him pretty slippery and making him someone who works best with a team.
• Scandal Savage: Another character who was a mercenary at one point and someone who also falls somewhere between tank and damage depending on what her kit ends up being. I do like her arm-blade claw things and I think giving her a wall-climb would be neat. I also think giving her rapid healing or temporary inability to be killed like Vandal might be fun but I also think calling in Knockout for an assist to give her an easy ranged ability might be fun and do a fair bit to make her different from Vandal.
• Cheshire: I chose Roy Harper in part because I knew I was going to include Cheshire/Jade Crock here. The fact they had a kid together makes it really appealing to me to put them in the same game so they can banter back and forth. Cheshire's primary is probably a short sword and her secondary is throwing knives. Beyond that not too much on her abilities save that she's almost certainly going to be damage and she's going to probably use poison in some regard.
• Deathstroke: Deathstroke's the closer. Lobo was a big name, Mirror Master's got fans and Cheshire is generally interesting, but Deathstroke's easily the biggest unit mover in this pack. I do think if I were to flesh out Deathstroke's kit, I'd probably want to emphasize him as a master of multiple weapons, give him a primary that's a machine gun with a secondary that's his sword, and then have his first ability switch him to his staff where suddenly the staff is his primary, and its energy blasts are his secondary. Additionally his other two basic abilities would probably change depending on whether he was using his sword and his gun, or his staff. It'd inherently make him pretty versatile but also make him a little more complicated than the average character.

Superman Revenge Squad
I like Superman villains and there were a few picks and gameplay niches amongst them that I think they'd work really well. This was one of the packs I had the easiest time with since there were several other characters I felt could be placed here and all feel unique and different from one another. With the previous two "seasons" it was a little tricky to find variance in abilities, not so with the Superman characters.

• General Zod: General Zod I think is one of the most popular Superman villains, one of three that could really stand out. The other one is at the end and I didn't use Brainiac (I just think other choices would be more fun/interesting). Zod's a potentially fun way to twist kryptonian capabilities even further, making him focused even more on raw brutality. Where Superman comes in to save the day and Supergirl swoops in to stop the bad guy, Zod steps in to smash stuff and start doing damage making him a damage type character. I think he's need to be relatively low health, and there might be something fun to do by giving him some abilities that emphasize his abilities as a leader, having him say call in Ursa and Non for a strafing run with heat vision, or calling in a spaceship to deal damage. There's room for some interesting design though it probably needs to be done carefully to keep him distinct from the two other Kryptonians.
• Livewire: I think Livewire is a fun character and could be interesting to play. She actually was in the initial roster but ended up getting cut for Static as I thought Static had the better kit and they had a lot of overlap in how they used lightning, which Shazam was also doing. That being said without that restriction, I imagine Livewire pushing the "lightning" powerset into a more movement centered kit, having her zip around nimbly and peppering the opponent with small blasts, constantly harassing them. I think she'd be another damage type character for the pack.
• Atomic Skull: Atomic Skull is a character I think has a generally cool aesthetic and an interesting powerset. It was a toss-up between him and Bizarro, but I felt like Atomic Skull visually is better differentiated from other characters and I kind of wanted to go with the less well known pick. I imagine Atomic Skull to be a tank of some kind with a big boom ultimate ability. Beyond that I haven't really thought out the kit all that much, but he's in my opinion a solid goofy pick.
• Manchester Black: So Manchester Black is another lesser known Superman villain but he's got a pretty solid rep as well and a fun powerset. I'll say that he'd also be a fun pick for powerset differentiation, as there are three separate psychic tanks and I actually think Manchester Black might work best as a support of some kind. Have his general play pattern be focused around buffing enemies and debuffing allies, mostly staying in the background for as long as possible while other people do the heavy fighting.
• Lady Blaze: I also kind of wanted to run with Lady Blaze as a pick. I don't think the average person on the street has any idea who she is, but on top of being a Superman villain she's also got a fun connection to Shazam and I also think she's generally got a solid bag of tricks with her magic. I think she'd probably be a support of some kind, using illusions and empowering allies but again not really a solid kit idea.
• Doomsday: The other really iconic Superman villain. I think Doomsday would probably get a fair bit of hype. As for design he's a tank, but I think the best way to translate over his feel is that Doomsday is a tank who gets stronger the longer he's engaged in combat. Have his abilities involve ramping up while dealing damage and/or healing while taking damage, and I think you can pretty effectively translate over Doomsday. He'd need to be balanced pretty carefully and it does potentially lead to some unfun scenarios where the best way to beat him is by just not interacting with him, but I think it could be cool and it would be worth exploring.

Mysticism and Magic
So the two big picks that made me want to go with this were actually Etrigan and Madame Xanadu. Madame Xanadu because I kind of wanted to push Abra Kadabra's card gimmick even further by giving her a deck where every card does something unique, and Etrigan for being iconic and being a fun sort of transforming tank. From there these were a mix of picks for recognizability, being able to do something interesting, and having incredibly wild and out there capabilities.

• John Constantine: John Constantine is one of DC's most popular magic based characters and I do think he would be an anticipated pick. Unfortunately, the stuff he's best at, talking, making deals and tricking people, does not translate too well over to a hero shooter. I think he'd be a support of some kind and there'd probably be some liberty's taken, but I can see him being the sort to be able to grant buffs that are deals of some kind, giving a benefit of some kind in exchange for a downside (say temporarily gaining massive amounts of healing but being rendered unable to attack or use abilities for example) that can then be used on allies and enemies equally. It would give him a lot of troll potential, which is something I tried to avoid, but I think that kind of works for Constantine if even his allies hate him sometimes because they had a bad experience with him in the past.
• Madame Xanadu: So the idea for Madame Xanadu is to give her a tarot deck of the major arcana with at least 22 cards in it with each having a different effect. Death would deal massive amounts of damage, the tower creates a large destructible tower upon hitting the ground, the Fool has a random effect, the Magician deals damage but lowers cooldowns, Temperance prevents the use of abilities etc.. The main thing keeping her in check would be a low rate of fire, inconsistency in the randomness of her next draw and having to keep track of which cards you have and haven't used. Her primary weapon would be throwing the card, and her secondary weapon would be a generic really weak magic blast. From there her abilities would consist of things like shuffling the deck, pocketing a card to use later, replacing the used deck with a new unused one, or tossing out a bunch of cards at once. I think she'd be a support because she's focused on effects rather than damage but the design would be pretty weird.
• Gentleman Ghost: I like Gentleman Ghost and he's a magic based character who can also use a gun. There's fun to be had playing with generic spooky ghost stuff and mixing it with old-timey highway man. He'd probably be a damage character but he can be messed with and altered to fit a number of different playstyles. I do know that some kind of intangibility where he can move through objects but can still attack back would be fun though it would need to be thought through how it's implemented..
• Brother Blood: I wanted to get another well-known Teen Titans villain onto the roster and felt Brother Blood worked well. Having his kit be based around rituals and such with a side of healing made him a pretty solid support character, as you could focus on the rejuvenation/restoration side of the character and mix in a little bit of blood based construct combat to give him something unique.
• Klarion the Witch Boy: Klarion was another character who I thought had a lot of recognition, and I considered him for the initial roster but initially passed on as others consistently just felt like better picks. That being said I did have an idea for him that I think is pretty unique and interesting. Klarion's primary weapon would be some kind of magical attack and his secondary weapon would be telling Teekl to reposition to the point he's aiming at. The main gimmick he'd have is that Klarion is completely invincible but Teekl has a low health-pool and will not move without Klarion's command and killing Teekl banishes Klarion, effectively doing the same thing as killing him. I think that's a really fun way to build on an existing bit of comics lore and get a super unique character.
• Jason Blood and the Demon Etrigan: Another pick I considered but ultimately didn't go with for the initial roster and after a certain round, it no longer felt appropriate to pick him considering how well known he was. The basic idea for the character is that you start off as Jason Blood, a thoroughly below average character, and then after a short while can get the ultimate ability which transforms Jason into Etrigan. Etrigan would be a powerful tank. While in Etrigan's form, the ultimate would remain transforming, but it would also heal him back to full and he'd be granted some extra movement speed to try and run away. The primary and secondary weapon would be fireballs and a sword across both forms and each form would have different abilities, with Etrigan's generally being better than Jason's. I think it's a fun design and it's a niche that hasn't yet been filled.

Masters of the Martial Arts
So I will freely admit that this right here was 100% my bias kicking in. This "season" is composed of four characters I really wanted in but either overruled due to similar thematics, or being problematic to make a kit for, one pick that was a minor character who fit the theme really well, and one character picked because of the restriction of needing to end and begin with a popular character I think the average player would be hyped for. This was also a really hard group to make diverse so a lot of the picks are kind of "samey" but I still enjoyed making it.

• Black Canary: So Black Canary was an obvious pick. She's popular and well-known and I wanted to include her for a while. Silver Swan actually has some elements of my ideas for Black Canary's kit when I couldn't get that to work. I think it would be best to pull from the Arrowverse White Canary and give her a bo staff to give her a weapon beyond just punches. It does make her more similar to Mockingbird from Marvel, but people have already made that comparison and the superpowers should be a clear differentiator anyways.
• Huntress: Huntress was another character I felt was a really natural fit for this kind of game and I wanted to include her, but felt she had too many similarities to Batman to fit well and other characters were prioritized over her, especially since I didn't want to overload the cast with Batman characters. I'm less concerned with that with these "seasons". Huntress would definitely use her crossbow as a her primary weapon and I imagine her also fitting into the general archetype of stealthy ambushing damage type character.
• Richard Dragon: Richard Dragon takes the spot by virtue of being the martial arts guy for a while and as such I wanted him in this collection of characters. This is less true to the text, but I think it might be fun to lean into the chi abilities a little more and give him the ability to do stuff like heal or shoot energy blasts at a distance. It's not true to the character in the comics, but it makes him easier to fit in gameplay-wise and I think it gives a fun thematic potential to the character that otherwise wouldn't be present. It also potentially makes him a support type character if he can heal others which otherwise I wouldn't have in this season
• Lady Shiva: I did try figuring out a way to work Lady Shiva into the base roster but it didn't work out as I struggled to make a compelling kit. That being said now that I don't have to make a compelling kit, I'd include her here. Her thematic fantasy is being the greatest and deadliest martial artist and as such she ought to be a damage type character with an emphasis on beating down anyone she gets close to. Make her fast have good health, and tools to mess up whatever target she lands on top of. She's meant to be a duelist type character but one who can very much get hampered by a relative lack of mobility.
• Cassandra Cain: This is obviously a for me pick but I think it's a good one. Again a lot of overlapping thematics here but I think it would be fun. Her primary weapon would probably be her martial arts and her secondary would be batarangs. I had ideas for an ability where she activates her body reading to temporarily automatically dodge all non-AOE attacks/damage that would otherwise connect with her. Additionally I think the core thing in designing her to work well would be to make her incredibly mobile and slippery for a non-flying character. Give her fast base movement speed, a triple-jump, wall-run, wall-cling, wall-climb and wall-jump to kind of emphasize her skills as one of the greatest without necessarily doing the same thing as Shiva and going all in on 1v1 melee combat. I do think she'd be a damage character of some kind though.
• Ra's al Ghul: Ra's al Ghul was the character I included in this group because of his popularity and the rules I made for myself in creating this "extra seasons" idea. I don't think he's going to move mountains but I think he's really well known and pretty popular considering how much he shows up in non-comics media. He also fits the theme of "martial arts master" and he could probably serve as a tank, kind of leaning on similar design to Vandal where he heals in order to soak up damage. Something involving using vials of Lazarus Pit water or something to give him that extra bit of durability. I do think he should incorporate a sword as one of his weapons.

Arkham Unleashed
Remember how I said how I didn't want to overload the roster with Batman characters? A lot of the fun of this was constraining ideas a bit and if there were additional seasons, you bet your ass whoever made this game would include a "batman villain" season to squeeze in even more popular characters. I tried to limit myself mostly to characters who would actually be in Arkham Asylum but that's not much of a limitation.

• Scarecrow: I think Scarecrow works as an opener as he's popular enough to consistently find his way into video games and he was in all of the Nolan Batman movies so I think he's pretty well known. I don't have an entire kit for him, but I think having his primary weapon be lobbed fear gas grenades and his secondary be a scythe is pretty solid in terms of design. I also think he'd make sense as a relatively squishy close range support who does less helping his enemies and more sowing chaos and confusion in the enemy team with abilities that don't do much damage.
• Mad Hatter: Mad Hatter is another fun pick and I think a character well known to comics fans but not to general audiences. I think having his main weapon be tossing razor hats and incorporating mind control into his kit somehow would be fun. A very loose kit idea I had but didn't complete or fully flesh out involved him acting as a "summoner" of sorts with his abilities including summoning the Tweedles to act as a screen/wall, summoning the March Hare to fire a machine gun in a set direction, summoning the Carpenter to build a structure of some kind, and summoning a mind controlled GCPD dressed as card soldiers to open fire on a set area. I don't know if that's the idea worth going with but I think it might be fun and make him a weird little support type who specializes in summoning NPC's
• White Rabbit: So White Rabbit is an off the wall pick and was my idea for a very weird maybe tank. The basic premise is that you play as Jaina Hudson and White Rabbit simultaneously. White Rabbit is a completely invincible projection that cannot take damage and mirrors Jaina's movements and actions. Jaina meanwhile is pretty squishy all things considered. I'd want to give her some kind of way to manipulate the projection and give her a tool to block incoming damage besides that to protect allies but I thought making a character focused a ton on the positioning of an invincible copy that mirrors there movements was something that was interesting and had never been done before.
• Firefly: Firefly was a safe pick but I don't really have any characters with a flamethrower. I feel like giving him a jetpack and pulling elements from the Pyro from TF2 is a pretty easy but kind of boring to design a competent fun character with a simple straightforward game plan.
• Condiment King: In the process of coming up with the roster I often considered which DC characters used unique projectiles. Eventually I realized the Condiment King fit this niche as no other character shoots condiments at people. There were two ways you could take this, you could try and make him a support, where the food heals people, or you could go fully goofy and make him into a damage type character who deals damage and can take out other characters by spraying them with mustard. I think the second one is much funnier and so that would be the direction I go. I don't have much of a kit beyond having him shoot sauce but I do know I'd name at least one ability "Lost in the Sauce" because Condiment King is a joke character and little slant rhymes like that amuse me.
• Two-Face: So Two-Face was ultimately my final pick for a character mostly because I think he's a big name, being in a lot of media outside of comics and the other two picks that could be even bigger, Riddler and Penguin, didn't have anything to set them apart. Bane was considered but didn't feel like he had any real hook to me, which was a similar situation to Mr. Freeze. Ultimately besides being well known and popular I went with Two-Face for the fact that he could have a really unique gimmick via his coin. I imagine the basics of Two-Face's kit is that his primary weapon is a pistol and his secondary is his coin. His coin does no damage but depending on how it randomly lands, he gains access to a separate set of abilities based on if he's "good" or "evil". "Good" Two-Face is a support and has abilities focused on shoring up and protecting his allies. "Bad" Two-Face is a damage type character and focuses on dealing damage to the enemy. I think that'd be fun and while I haven't fleshed out the rest of his kit, I do think this makes for a solid basis for a fun character.

Final Thoughts
I had way too much fun coming up with all of these ideas but I'd like to hear other people's thoughts and ideas. I think it's an interesting hypothetical discussion, and while I in no way think this is realistic or even something I'd trust to be made, I do think it was a fun idea to get thinking about characters and I'd like to see what other people have to say.

It is a ton of words for something I think most people probably won't care about too much, and doesn't have much to do with the quest, but I am curious to hear people's thoughts on it.