Jab’s Builds! (Sword of Sodan! Nightmare Creatures/Circus! Lawnmower Man!)

[danelsan]

yeah...my country has not exactly been blessed by comic book companies, huh? Oh, well, Sunspot and Fire are reasonably decent characters, at least.

[M4C8]

yeah...my country has not exactly been blessed by comic book companies, huh? Oh, well, Sunspot and Fire are reasonably decent characters, at least.

How could you forget the legendary 'Shark-Girl'

[Jabroniville]

EL VEJIGANTE (Miguel Rodriguez)
Created By: Tom Beland & Juan Doe
First Appearance: The Fantastic Four: !Attack del M.O.D.O.K.! (Nov. 2010)
Role: Puerto Rico's National Hero
PL 8 (126)
STRENGTH 7 STAMINA 8 AGILITY 5
FIGHTING 8 DEXTERITY 3
INTELLIGENCE 1 AWARENESS 2 PRESENCE 3

Skills:
Acrobatics 4 (+9)
Athletics 1 (+9)
Expertise (Soldier) 2 (+3)
Insight 2 (+4)
Perception 2 (+4)
Persuasion 2 (+5)
Stealth 1 (+6)

Advantages:
Interpose, Ranged Attack 2

Powers:
Leaping 1 (15 feet) [1]
Regeneration 2 [2]
Insubstantial 4 (Flaws: Side-Effect- Stunned for 3 Ranks) (Quirks: Must Be Holding Breath -2) [15]
"Phasing Attack" Damage 6 (Feats: Penetrating 6) (Extras: Affects Corporeal) [18]

Offense:
Unarmed +8 (+7 Damage, DC 23)
Phasing Attack +6 (+6 Damage, DC 21)
Initiative +5

Defenses:
Dodge +8 (DC 18), Parry +8 (DC 18), Toughness +8, Fortitude +8, Will +5

Complications:
Motivation (Saving Puerto Rico)
Responsibility (Ex-Addict)- When he failed his mission in Iraq, Miguel fell into the bottle for years.
Weakness (Leaving Puerto Rico)- El Vejigante cannot leave his beloved island. However, he doesn't see this as such a bad thing.

Total: Abilities: 74 / Skills: 14--7 / Advantages: 3 / Powers: 36 / Defenses: 6 (126)

-El Vejigante was created for a series of Fantastic Four one-shots done by two guys I've never heard of, the artist of which (Juan Doe, which sounds like a fake name) is from Puerto Rico. And as such, the issues dealt with the FF in Puerto Rico- in the first, The Thing was considered a big-time hero because he resembled a fabled fortress on the island; in the second, Diablo aids the Torch & Spider-Man in a fight against a Kaiju created from a notorious American military base/test carried out on the island; and in the third, El Vejigante helped out Reed & Sue on vacation as they faced M.O.D.O.K. and some A.I.M.-created Sentient Monkey Minions.

-It was actually a really neat mini-series (collected in a trade), with some VERY unique, cool art. I'm not normally one who cares for weird, stylized art in comic books, but Doe is REALLY good, and draws a very funny, cartoon-looking team. His Ben Grimm is PERFECT, too- arguably the best Thing ANYONE has drawn (including Kirby & Byrne). His Sue & Reed keep changing form between different issues as his style changes, but each one is still pretty good. The writer really "gets" the team, too, with a classically-douchey Johnny, a morose Ben (he's REALLY angry when the rest of the team invades his secret vacation, because it's the one place he doesn't feel like an outcast weirdo), an obsessive but not ENTIRELY rude Reed (whose ego is so great he refuses to retreat on a mission because he still thinks he can figure out how to find something), and a smart Sue. There's a great bit where Sue points out that Ben is the ONLY non-egotistical male in her life and is a hero despite all that's happened to him ("you could have been the next Doom, or The Hulk"), and another where Sue gets PISSED at M.O.D.O.K. for interrupting their vacation, throws a Force Field into his spinal column and threatens to stroke him out unless he gives up (Vejigante gets a great line when he says "you used your Big Momma voice too... I almost went home to clean up my room!"). Check it out, even if it DOES double as a "Patriotic Tirade" at times.

-So El Vejigante is based off of Puerto Rican folklore and looks pretty cool, and packs some decent powers onto a Rookie Hero (who's like PL 7.5 mostly) package. He's an ex-addict failed soldier who gets a chance at redemption, gaining the powers of a spirit that will hold onto him for about a century before finding a new host. He's strong, tough and can go Insubstantial (with some limits- he has to hold his breath and it "messes with my system", a low-level Side Effect).

Last time I posted El Vejigante, Skavenger (damn, I miss that dude. Anyone figure out what happened to him?) would post his recollection of the guy who wrote those stories:

As much as I want to talk about the Viral Swarm, I'm going back a bit further to talk about Tom Beland who wrote the Puerto Rico comics. He's mostly famous for writing True Story, Swear To God, a comic about how he, a newspaper columnist/cartoonist from Napa Valley, met the love of his life, a woman from Puerto Rico, sitting at a bus stop at Disney World. It's quite possibly one of my favorite comics of all time. He also wrote the Web of Romance book where Spider-Man tries to figure out what to get MJ for a present and gives her a set of web shooters he turned into bracelets. It really worked as a comic, since it broke down by Pete and MJ worked so well. I recommend checking his stuff out. I keep looking for his other stuff, but it's hard to find.

(Footnote, I wrote up a review of his Web of Romance comic on my blog a few years ago, and he responded to it with a big hearty "thanks!" A definite highlight for me.)

RomanMetal also commented on it once, being surprised that I found out the book and statted this one-off- hi, RomanMetal!

[Jabroniville]

Okay yeah, I checked, and I don't have the Gadget Guide for Mechs. I didn't care for the 2e rules (I'm still very certain the Mecha & Manga rulebook actually calculated their sample versions improperly, too), so I went with "Treat it as a Monster with some rule restrictions" for simplicity's sake. If there's one thing M&M wasn't really designed to do, it was reflect hundred-foot-tall Giant Robots .

[Ken]

Hmmm. Challenge accepted.

[Jabroniville]

LA BANDERA (Real Name Unknown)
Created By: Archie Goodwin & John Byrne
First Appearance: Wolverine #19 (Dec. 1989)
Role: Silly Mind-Controller
Country of Origin: Cuba
Group Affiliations: None
PL 8 (115)
STRENGTH 2 STAMINA 3 AGILITY 3
FIGHTING 10 DEXTERITY 0
INTELLIGENCE 1 AWARENESS 1 PRESENCE 2

Skills:
Acrobatics 4 (+7)
Athletics 3 (+4)
Deception 5 (+7)
Expertise (Freedom Fighter) 7 (+8)
Insight 5 (+6)
Perception 4 (+5)
Persuasion 7 (+9)
Ranged Combat (Staff) 4 (+8)
Stealth 3 (+6)
Vehicles 4 (+4)

Advantages:
Daze (Persuasion), Fascinate (Persuasion), Inspire, Improved Critical (Blaster Staff), Ranged Combat 4

Powers:
"Mutant Powers: Inspire Courage in Others"
Affliction 8 (Will; Entranced/Compelled/Controlled) (Extras: Area- 60ft. Burst +2, Cumulative) (Flaws: Limited to Inspiration & Courage, Fades by Blasting -1/2) [20]

"Blaster Staff" (Flaws: Easily Removable) (Feats: Restricted 2- Only La Bandera) [7]
Blast 8 (Flaws: Limited to Amount of Inspiration Given) (8 points)

Offense:
Unarmed +10 (+2 Damage, DC 17)
Blaster Staff +8 (+8 Ranged Damage, DC 23)
Inspire Others +8 Area (+8 Affliction, DC 18)
Initiative +3

Defenses:
Dodge +10 (DC 20), Parry +9 (DC 19), Toughness +3, Fortitude +5, Will +5

Complications:
Motivation (Stopping Drug Lords)- La Bandera's father died as a result of drug abuse, and so La Bandera seeks to inspire communities to attack the dealers.

Total: Abilities: 44 / Skills: 46--23 / Advantages: 8 / Powers: 27 / Defenses: 13 (115)

-La Bandera (Spanish for "flag") is a weird one-shot character debuting in Wolverine's own book. She's an anti-drug heroine ex-pat from Cuba (her father defected, but then got addicted to drugs and died), and tried to inspire people to fight using her mutant power. She nearly got eaten by Tiger Shark, but was rescued by Wolverine, who resisted her romantic advances and warned her that her powers would get innocent people hurt. She is rescued once more, and then helps lead a jailbreak of political prisoners in her home country, inspiring various people to either help out (fellow prisoners) or to do their best and have confidence in themselves (the pilot of their getaway craft).

-After this four-issue Wolverine arc, the character disappears, and then she was killed off years later by Zeitgeist, along with various other terrible foreign heroes. Not much of a run. All of five years separates her debut from her (as of yet) permanent demise, making this another example of Mark Gruenwald's "Spring Cleaning" of concepts he thought were lame.

-Her powers are pretty minor- a positive Affliction affect that tends to get used to put civilians into the line of fire (NOT the power you want a PC to have), and a Blaster Staff that requires "inspiration" to work. Her Affliction power itself also Fades once she starts Blasting away. She's kind of PL 8, but usually operates at a lower level- GMs would have to limit just how much Inspiration she needs to put out a full-powered Blast.

[Ares]

You know, there wouldn't be a perceived lack of diversity in comics if Marvel and DC would just quit killing off or ignoring their foreign heroes.

[Jabroniville]

haha, wow- Disney has announced that Olaf's Frozen Adventure is ending its run in theatres Dec. 8th: http://ew.com/movies/2017/12/03/olafs-f ... lled-coco/

The short was ALWAYS announced as having a "limited run" in theatres, but it's hard to deny the timing of this. Hopefully it's the last time Disney sticks a huge TV-episode-length thing before a film. It's one thing to annoy people, but Frozen is Disney's best-selling BRAND- you hurt the BRAND and you can do irreparable harm. Just ask Sega after the 32X.

[Jabroniville]

CAPTAIN FORZA (Real Name Unknown, aka Captain Forsa, Captain Strength)
Created By: James D. Hudnall, John Calimee & Mike Manley
First Appearance: Alpha Flight #78 (Dec. 1989)
Role: Disposable Hero, Brazilian National Hero
PL 7 (76)
STRENGTH 6 STAMINA 4 AGILITY 3
FIGHTING 8 DEXTERITY 3
INTELLIGENCE 1 AWARENESS 2 PRESENCE 3

Skills:
Athletics 2 (+8)
Deception 2 (+5)
Expertise (Current Events) 4 (+5)
Insight 1 (+3)
Investigation 3 (+5)
Perception 2 (+4)

Advantages: 
Fast Grab

Offense:
Unarmed +8 (+6 Damage, DC 21)
Initiative +3

Defenses:
Dodge +8 (DC 18), Parry +8 (DC 18), Toughness +4, Fortitude +5, Will +4

Complications:
Responsibility (Hero of Brazil)

Total: Abilities: 60 / Skills: 14--7 / Advantages: 1 / Powers: 0 / Defenses: 8 (76)

-Captain Forza (called "Captain Forsa" in his debut, though this is grammatically-incorrect. "Forza" is also Italian, not Portugese) appears to be an attempt by Mark Gruenwald to create a new "Scourge of the Underworld"-type story in Captain America, in which a villain kills off forgettable "filler" characters across the Marvel Universe. Forza was created just for this story arc, as he appears in Alpha Flight, boasts of capturing the villain who's been killing South American super-heroes, but is confronted by Zeitgeist, who fatally stabs him through the chest. Zeitgeist would go on to kill La Bandera of Puerto Rico, and his former teammate Blitzkrieg of the Schutz-Heligruppe. Plus a handful of characters who didn't get real appearances or powers- they were simply mentioned as having died.

-Unlike the Scourge of the Underworld story, which featured a dozen books all showcasing Jobber Villains that the villain would kill off, it appears that only Alpha Flight and Captain America got into the act this time around- it was over pretty quickly and the villain died.

-Captain Forza likely has superhuman strength, but we know nothing of his power or capabilities aside from the fact that Zeitgeist easily bluffed him with a teleportation power, then killed him. He's, uh... not a very good super-hero.

[danelsan]

Man, this dude's name is a mess. He is likely supposed to be "Captain Strength", but in "what they speak in Brazil", right? However, Captain is outright English and apparently it remained untranslated in all of his appearances?

Then you have Forza. You are right, Forsa is grammatically wrong. Forza on the other hand does mean Strength...in Italian! Possibly someone getting confused about Fuerza, which would be correct in Spanish XD

In actual Portuguese, it would be Capitão Força, so you can see where somebody might get forsa if they only heard it or something.

I mean, I get that this was a disposable character and Google Translator was not a thing yet, but it is still a sad showing of poor research XD

[Jabroniville]

Man, this dude's name is a mess. He is likely supposed to be "Captain Strength", but in "what they speak in Brazil", right? However, Captain is outright English and apparently it remained untranslated in all of his appearances?

Then you have Forza. You are right, Forsa is grammatically wrong. Forza on the other hand does mean Strength...in Italian! Possibly someone getting confused about Fuerza, which would be correct in Spanish XD

In actual Portuguese, it would be Capitão Força, so you can see where somebody might get forsa if they only heard it or something.

I mean, I get that this was a disposable character and Google Translator was not a thing yet, but it is still a sad showing of poor research XD

haha, that's good- Marvunapp mentioned the flaw, too, but I misunderstood: http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/captainforsa.htm

[L-Space]

Just a note that it was Mongolian fleets that were wiped out by "divine wind" not Korean, they had taken over Korea at the time and used it as a staging area to attack Japan. There's also a theory out there that the reason the fleets were so massively devastated by the storms was because the Mongols forced the Koreans to build their boats and the Koreans (not exactly being fond of their Mongolians overlords) may have half-assed it a bit.

Oh, damn. I'll have to fix that. I could have sworn in all my History classes (History Minor, here!), I'd heard it was Koreans. I also remember in my RoninArmy thread, a Korean correcting me that Korea had its own empire for CENTURIES at a time, not decades. But alas, it was on the ATT, so I couldn't edit it any longer.

If I remember correctly there were some Koreans in the attack and the boats were Korean made, but at the time the Mongols were inhabiting Korea and pretty much running things (and treating Koreans as SCC).

[greycrusader]

Sometimes the best tactic for a writer trying to name a foreign hero is simply to give the English translation (or closest version thereof), because other languages do not necessarily conform to English conventions; I did a Russian villain which got an "official" 3e publication, and was at first intent on having her appear under a code-name in that language..but the only Cyrillic words which came across as being (mostly) pronounceable by the vast majority of readers didn't really correspond at all-a couple were actually prepositions, not nouns. I didn't even really make the attempt for the Norwegian and Sri Lankan villains I came up with, either.

All my best.

[Jabroniville]

Yeah, I was happy to learn my "Calaverita" OC was accurate enough that some Mexican folks assumed I spoke Spanish .

[Jabroniville]

I love how Marvel has like FOUR GUYS who dress like giant cocks.

BANTAM (Roberto Velasquez)
Created By: Mark Gruenwald & David Wohl
First Appearance: Captain America #12 (1993)
Role: Forgotten Character
Country of Origin: Puerto Rico
Group Affiliations: None
PL 7 (73)
STRENGTH 8 STAMINA 8 AGILITY 3
FIGHTING 6 DEXTERITY 0
INTELLIGENCE 0 AWARENESS 0 PRESENCE 0

Skills: 
Acrobatics 3 (+6)
Deception 2 (+2)
Expertise (Pro Boxer) 4 (+4)
Intimidation 4 (+4)
Perception 3 (+3)
Stealth 2 (+5)

Advantages: 
Accurate Attack, Defensive Attack, Improved Critical (Unarmed)

Powers:
"Power Broker Treatment"
Power-Lifting 1 (12 tons) [1]
Leaping 1 (15 feet) [1]

Offense:
Unarmed +6 (+8 Damage, DC 23)
Initiative +3

Defenses:
Dodge +6 (DC 16), Parry +6 (DC 16), Toughness +8, Fortitude +8, Will +3

Complications:
Temper- Roberto has a bad temper, and is gets him into trouble. He will lash out, even if outnumbered, or against a super-hero (like Cap).

Total: Abilities: 50 / Skills: 18--9 / Advantages: 3 / Powers: 2 / Defenses: 6 (73)

-Good Lord... this guy is a ridiculously minor character, debuting in a Captain America Annual as yet another Power Broker-bestowed strong guy (Gruenwald did a LOT of that...), a Bantamweight boxer who gained Class 10 super-strength after struggling as a fighter, but accidentally killed his opponent using it. He fought some gangsters, then Cap (after getting angry), and they made a team. He decided to continue with boxing, but as a trainer- his strength made him far too dangerous to compete in the ring. I read the book, and it's pretty lame- nothing particularly BAD it it, but it's just boring. Bantam was gone for fifteen years, at which point they casually had him killed by ANOTHER lame character in Thunderclap- he had registered with the Super-Human Registration Act, and was attempting to convince Thunderclap to register, too- Thunderclap threw him into an oil truck, which exploded- killing Bantam. Such is life.

-Bantam's a PL 7 guy by virtue of having Super-Strength AND Fighting Skill as a concept, though he lacks great accuracy, being an amateur boxer at-best, and is not experienced in super-fights (he usually uses Accurate Attack for this reason). He probably SHOULD be PL 8 given the concept, but I just refuse to believe that he's THAT good. He's a boxer by trade, but he's barely better at melee combat than many heroes who use it as a secondary ability, since he's just a jobber. He packs a punch, but he's so limited that his points-cost is embarrassingly-low.