Jab’s Builds! (Miss Piggy! The Swedish Chef! Sweetums! Gonzo!)

Where in all of your character write ups will go.
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Ares
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Freefall! Rainmaker! DV8! Danger Girl!)

Post by Ares »

HalloweenJack wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 1:21 am ...Go on.
Let's just say that her Agents of Mayhem "G.I.Joe-esque" code name is "Safeword".
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Freefall! Rainmaker! DV8! Danger Girl!)

Post by Ares »

But yeah, Danger Girl was clearly a lot of lighthearted fun, some action and cheesecake without being offensive about it. It was basically if the Sean Connery James Bond was the 'Charlie' of Charlie's Angels, and they'd regularly team up with an Americanized version of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond. And would get regular assists from a guy who was basically a masked hybrid of Solid Snake and Ethan Hunt.
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Crimson

Post by Jabroniville »

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"Catcher's Mitt" hands is the dead-giveaway that someone's a Joe Mad Clone.

CRIMSON (Alex Elder)
Created By:
Brian Augustyn & Humberto Ramos
First Appearance: Crimson #1 (May 1998)
Role: Teen Vampire
Marvel Character Most Ripped Off: None ("Teen Vampire" has been a generic plot since the 1980s)
'90s Ratio: 7/10 (blood-drinking vampire)
Group Affiliations: None

-So this is a comic that doesn't interest me in the least, and is unbuildable since I'll never read it and there's not much online about it, and I don't care anyways, but here goes.

-When Joe Madureira hit huge in the late 1990s with his Uncanny X-Men work, it created a new surge of copycats and clones in the comic book industry. With a style built upon his love of anime, but adding a lot of weird things like Super-Surreal Anatomy (not a lot of anime characters sported the enormous hands and fingers than Joe Mad used- typically he just did "anime eyes" and the distinctive armor types common in '90s anime, and that was the extent of his touches), Mad went over really big, and so you saw guys like Humberto Ramos & Chris Bachalo doing modifications of that style. Artist Roger Cruz was just starting out at the time, and like a lot of amateurs, just copying a style EXACTLY, to the point of doing obvious "Swiping" (https://www.cbr.com/meta-messages-joe-m ... r-a-swipe/)- this is frowned upon at the best of times, but Cruz was doing it to a guy who had JUST BECOME FAMOUS, and was copying from what was then a tiny amount of very-recent books, making it even more clear that he was aping someone else.

-Humberto Ramos did a style very similar to Joe Mad's, especially back then- his people had malformed, gigantic hands, weird body types, balloon breasts and huge heads. His style has devolved even further into something I consider the most hideous, malformed, disturbingly-gross distorted art style I've ever seen, and I consider him an even worse artist than Rob Liefeld. His "person holding their elongated arms all the way to the ground while holding their mouth wide open with their jaw unhinged" look is a particular hate of mine. But he's the main artist of Crimson, which is what got him noticed.

-Crimson is about Alex Elder, a teen boy who gets bitten by a vampire and turns into one of the Undead himself. An elder Vampire named Ekimus takes Alex under his wing and teaches him about vampirism, and seems to be repentant about the deaths he's caused. They're opposed by the Vampire Queen Lisseth (Ekimus's former lover), who intends to rule the world, with her ally Victor Van Fleet, a U.S. senator with his eye on the Presidency... who is a vampire himself. A vampire-hunter named Scarlet ends up becoming Alex's love interest.

-The book featured Ramos's distinctive Joe Mad-like people, a lot of tits on the covers (including literal "taped Xs over the boobs" stuff), and was probably pretty edgelord-y. It was a product of the Cliffhanger Comics imprint, which was itself an imprint of Wildstorm, which was an imprint of Image Comics... this is very confusing. I think because it's not in continuity with anything else at Wildstorm (which was then still supposed to be part of Image's continuity), or just because they wanted some distance from the "Image World" or something. In any case, it just ended up published by Wildstorm at the end, as Cliffhanger faded away. Comics are weird. Crimson lasted for 24 issues, ending naturally in 2001, the longest-running of Cliffhanger's books (Danger Girl moved away from Image entirely, and Battle Chasers... well that one's just infamous.

-Alex is apparently a Vampire with "Chosen One" powers, whatever those are. ComicVine says "Fire" in the descriptor, but doesn't elaborate.
Last edited by Jabroniville on Wed Aug 17, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Freefall! Rainmaker! DV8! Danger Girl!)

Post by Ares »

Oddly enough, the thing I like most about Crimson was the idea that "Little Red Riding Hood" is based off of an event that created an entire organization of red hood wearing monster hunters. The barely boob-covering bondage gear was a bit much, but the red hood monster hunters is an idea worth stealing.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
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Witchblade

Post by Jabroniville »

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WITCHBLADE (Sara Pezzini)
Created By:
Marc Silvestri & David Wohl
First Appearance: Cyblade/Shi- The Battle for Independents #1 (Jan. 1995)
Role: The Ultimate Titty-Book Star
Marvel Character Most Ripped Off: None
'90s Ratio: 10/10 (Combat nudist covered in spikes)
Group Affiliations: None
PL 10 (153)
STRENGTH
2/4 STAMINA 3/7 AGILITY 4
FIGHTING 10 DEXTERITY 4
INTELLIGENCE 2 AWARENESS 3 PRESENCE 3

Skills:
Athletics 6 (+8)
Close Combat (Tendrils) 2 (+12)
Deception 3 (+6)
Expertise (Police Officer) 8 (+10)
Insight 3 (+6)
Intimidation 4 (+7)
Investigation 8 (+11)
Perception 5 (+8)
Persuasion 1 (+4)
Stealth 4 (+8)
Vehicles 2 (+6)

Advantages:
Equipment 4 (Police Pistol +4), Improved Aim, Improved Critical (Tendrils), Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Ranged Attack 6

Powers:
"Witchblade Link"
Enhanced Strength 2 [4]
Enhanced Stamina 4 [8]
Protection 2 [2]
Regeneration 6 [6]
Leaping 2 (30 feet) [2]

Energy Blast 8 (16) -- [20]
  • AE: "Projectile Darts" Blast 5 (Extras: Multiattack) (15)
  • AE: "Sharp Tendrils" Strength-Damage +4 (Feats: Reach 4, Affects Insubstantial) (Extras: Penetrating 6) (15)
  • AE: Flight 4 (30 mph) (Flaws: Winged) (4)
  • AE: Movement 1 (Wall-Crawling) (2)
Offense:
Unarmed +10 (+2 Damage, DC 17)
Witchblade Strength +10 (+4 Damage, DC 19
Tendrils +12 (+8 Damage, DC 23)
Darts +10 (+5 Ranged Damage, DC 20)
Energy Blast +10 (+8 Ranged Damage, DC 23)
Initiative +8

Defenses:
Dodge +11 (DC 21), Parry +11 (DC 21), Toughness +3 (+9 Witchblade), Fortitude +7, Will +8

Complications:
Responsibility (Controlling The Witchblade)- The Witchblade craves violent action, and so Sara must constantly fight against it.
Relationship (Various)- Sara has had many male partners in the NYPD, having romantic interactions with two of them. There's also a bond of sorts between her and Jackie Estacado, The Darkness.

Total: Abilities: 62 / Skills: 44--22 / Advantages: 14 / Powers: 42 / Defenses: 13 (153)

-In the annals of comic book history, the honorable tradition of "Titty Books" has always been a thing. Even back in the '40s you had spank-bank material like The Phantom Lady, which was entirely based around giga-cleavage and damsels in distress. This continued on to modern times, with all sorts of books designed to get the pages sticky. But no "Titty Book" has ever been more tittified than WITCHBLADE, a book so devoted to Fanservice that it stars a nude woman with a body covering the size of a DNA strand.

-Witchblade is best-known for its superheroine's "uniform", but is also the place where legendary Fanservice artist Michael Turner got his start, drawing his exceptionally elongated torsos, specializing more in slender tummies and pretty faces than giant boobs (in stark contrast to most artists of the time). Turner's main problem was a common one- he was one of the worst artists on Earth for "SameFace", notably drawing a Witchblade/Lara Croft crossover in which both Sara & Lara, women with long brown hair, looked absolutely identical. Witchblade would make another star yet again, when Stjepan Šejić started using his self-created "spiky-thing" tools in Photoshop to make giant, extremely-detailed scaled and bladed suits for his characters- his own skill with Fanservice would allow him to create the S&M-themed lesbian sex comic Sunstone.

-In any case, Witchblade stars Sara Pezzini as a NYPD detective who gains an ancient weapon that removes all of her clothes and makes her kinda spiky. It saved her after being shot by mobsters, healing her wounds and turning her into a nudist superhero. She teams with various partners, two of whom fall in love with her, and eventually gets tainted by the "Darkness" portion of the Witchblade, doing a big "Spider-Man with the Venom Symbiote" thing. She even got mysteriously pregnant, and gave the Witchblade to a woman named Danielle Baptiste! So it turned out the pregnancy stemmed from Jackie Estacado (aka "The Darkness"), who's been forced to have sex with Sara when she was comatose, creating a child who was the "balance between the dark and light". Near-death from giving birth, Sara is saved when Danielle shares the Witchblade with her. Sara continues on with a growing attraction to Jackie, and Witchblade #185 ends her story, as she retires as a detective in order to keep the Witchblade after an Internal Affairs investigation. She becomes a private investigator after this.

-Witchblade has an assortment of flashy, visually-intensive powers and light stats otherwise, but is a solid PL 10 heroine. I haven't read too much to make a real assessment of her PL, but she certainly didn't seem to be completely dominating when she teamed up with Lara Croft (who is PL 8-9 at best), so I went here. She has a Blast, melee weapons with some good range, movement powers, Regeneration and solid toughness (which is obvious, given how protective that armor looks).
Last edited by Jabroniville on Wed Aug 17, 2022 7:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by Davies »

Witchblade also had a two-season long live-action show (which was less fanservicey) and an 24-episode anime, both of which turned the fanservice down a notch (at least in some ways, in the latter instance.) Add all of its spin-offs, and it's fair to say that it's been a fairly successful franchise.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by Jabroniville »

Davies wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 6:33 am Witchblade also had a two-season long live-action show (which was less fanservicey) and an 24-episode anime, both of which turned the fanservice down a notch (at least in some ways, in the latter instance.) Add all of its spin-offs, and it's fair to say that it's been a fairly successful franchise.
yeah, I remember the TV show and vaguely heard of the anime. The show was in the genre of Relic Hunter and stuff like that, but was nowhere near as sexy as those, which is funny given the source material.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by Jabroniville »

FINALLY done watching The Imagineering Story, which means I can get back to Kim Possible (I didn't want to keep switching back and forth, because that just delays my completion of things even MORE, lol- look at how long it's taking me to get through Sailor Stars!).

In the final chapter, which is about the past 10 years of park development, they add a lot of stuff. Shanghai Disneyland is being built. And of course they mention (in polite terms) the dick-measuring nature of Chinese culture being important, so they had to build THIS monstrosity. "Oh, China is a BIG country, and they like things to be BIG", so they build that monstrosity of a castle in their Magic Kingdom park- it's only a bit taller than the others, but is hugely wide and fat, now looming over everything.

The creation of the "Avatar" portion of Animal Kingdom is interesting. I'd forgotten they'd probably touch on that, lol. The lead designer Joe Rohde (who also did the AK park in the first place) was like "I had no idea WTF I was gonna do here" and points out how he's often not excited about projects at the start- his job is to find out what IS exciting about those properties. James Cameron of all people comes on and explains how Joe got what made Avatar work, while the narration/talking heads kind of bring up the issues fans had with the announcement ("Are people going to want to see a whole land of this?" and "The movie had now been out for a WHILE").

The stuff about the most advanced animatronic ever built- the 10-foot tall Navi in the "River Journey" attraction, is pretty great. There are 42 motors in the thing's head. They talk about the "Uncanny Valley" (without actually using that term)- just going on about how the motors in the face need to all move right, and the skin thickness needs to be right, or the whole thing becomes "this is creepy" and feels unnatural.

You can tell Rohde is their best Imagineer because he's all into things like "the emotion of the ride" and how to capture things. With Avatar's "Flight of Passage" ride, they all felt this wave of euphoria at one point during a test-ride, and spent the rest of their time trying to recapture it- Cameron convinced them to slow it down, because he didn't want everyone all jacked up and being hammered through the 3D ride scenes- he wanted it to be more serene and feel more cool. So they met in the middle.

And now it's on the re-theme of the Tower of Terror ride to Guardians of the Galaxy. They bring up controversy over the announcement (another head Imagineer bluntly stated earlier on that they loved the hardcore fans, "But we wish they'd give us more of a chance/trust us more", but she was talking about adding Disney characters to "it's a small world"). Rohde says with GOTG, they had to turn the scary Terror drops to a fun, irreverent thing. Make it more up-and-down and comedic instead of a huge drop straight down.

lol and then it's on Galaxy's Edge, with Ares's favorite person, Kathleen Kennedy! "Against conventional wisdom, they decided to create a unique land, so that every guest could follow their OWN immersive hero's journey". They go into the elaborate stuff for the "Smuggler's Run" and "Rise of the Resistance", which are the most complex attractions ever.

But booooooooooooooo, they only show the new Beauty & the Beast animatronics twice, and only for a second each!

All in all, it's a pretty neat, informative documentary. A bit dry at points, and equal parts "spend a lot of time on one thing" and "wait, that's all they're gonna talk about that one thing?", to the point where I almost wanna see a documentary about every attraction in the parks. There's a lot of "Architecture Nerd" stuff in it, and a lot of honesty about past mistakes... providing the people who made those mistakes are no longer there, or are far enough away. Them talking shit on Califonia Adventure was pretty classic, as was bombing on "Disney Studios" in Paris. The bit on the Disney Cruise Line was unexpected but kind of interesting, and showing all the parks was great. Seeing Michael Eisner again was a trip, as he's so notorious in Disney history (but they point out he brought them from nearly dying to a mega-corp in 20 years), and Paul Pressler was treated like an idiot, lol.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by Sidious »

Oh hey Crimson. I loved that series. there's a bunch of nuanced things in it. Like Ekimus not being an actual vampire but the father of all vampires (along with Lillith). He's actually from another humanoid race created by God before humans. St George being reincarnated to deal with the dragons (yet another race that God created during Eden. They are the ones that burned down the garden.) The main antagonist Van Fleet being a precursor to Alex, having been trained and powered up by Ekimus before going bad. The Children of Judas, that first pic you have there of the pack. Scarlet's organization is cool. Bunch of other things.

I think the best part was they didn't leave things hanging when the book was ending. They did fast forward a bit through all the other stuff Alex had to do but eventually he regains his humanity and returns home to his family.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by Ian Turner »

Witchblade was an interesting idea for a character, assuming a non-T&A version in which the armor actual covers all the tender bits of the wearer's anatomy, instead of looking like metal pasties and butt-floss. A shapeshifting metal armor that can grow blades, or whip/urumi-like reach slashing tendrils, or even, in extremis, wings, was totally cool.

But Taboo did it better, IMO, since her 'witchblade' was made out of a vampire's bones. :)

But wow, that art was cool. I was playing a lot of Vampire: the Masquerade at the time, and a friend had a vampire with a (powerful ghoul) servant named Ian Nottingham that was pretty much ripped right out of the book.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by drkrash »

The Witchblade TV show kept most of the major story beats of the comic without the T&A, demonstrating that there was a story there. It was a totally 90s story, but it was there.

And for a book that started as a T&A Showcase, Sara Pezzini really developed into something else. She went from being a glam model to a practical T-shirt and jeans cop, she had with steady boyfriends, she got pregnant and had a child, and even the appearance of the Witchblade was generally less revealing over time.

Then Stjepan Šejić took over on art, the spin-off Angelus was released, and we had multi-page lesbian sex scenes.

EDIT: Probably should read ALL of Jab's commentary before posting. My bad. Move along.
Last edited by drkrash on Tue Sep 22, 2020 2:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by Ares »

Sidious wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 11:35 am Oh hey Crimson. I loved that series. there's a bunch of nuanced things in it. Like Ekimus not being an actual vampire but the father of all vampires (along with Lillith). He's actually from another humanoid race created by God before humans. St George being reincarnated to deal with the dragons (yet another race that God created during Eden. They are the ones that burned down the garden.) The main antagonist Van Fleet being a precursor to Alex, having been trained and powered up by Ekimus before going bad. The Children of Judas, that first pic you have there of the pack. Scarlet's organization is cool. Bunch of other things.

I think the best part was they didn't leave things hanging when the book was ending. They did fast forward a bit through all the other stuff Alex had to do but eventually he regains his humanity and returns home to his family.
Huh, sounds like there were a lot more cool ideas than I initially suspected, and that the creative team actually went beyond the usual "series is over, LOL" and actually wrapped up the story.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by Sidious »

There was a great part where the archangels are in a diner voting on if they should wipe out Alex and end in a tie. In walks Lucifer to cast his vote "Looks like dad forgot to revoke my membership, Mikey" he votes to let Alex live. afterward we see him walking away and in a dark alley is Ekimus thanking him for the favor.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by Spectrum »

I keep reading Eskim(o)us
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Gen-13! Danger Girl! Crimson! Witchblade!)

Post by catsi563 »

witchblade had a great story where Pez teamed with lara and the Magdalena that was some fun actions and fan service
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