Just the Ticket

I came up with this next character while I was at work, pushing a line of (probably too many) shopping carts with one hand. At the time, there was a Psychics contest brewing over at Heromachine. Traditionally, psychic power is stuff like telekinesis, mind-reading, fortune-telling, pyrokinesis, and other powers that specifically have to do with mental ability. So I thought it was a novel concept to have a psychic who could manifest his power physically. I put sufficient psychic energy (so to speak) into creating, shading, and otherwise realizing this character that he qualified for the Psychics contest polls that week. Meet Strong-Arm: Name: Strong-Arm Alias: Terrence Armstrong Team Affiliations: Sixth Street Sinners, The Enforcers, Clockwork (reserve member) Race: Human Birthplace: London, England Powers: Mentally enhanced strength, bulletproof astral arm. Bio: Terrence Armstrong was always powerful for his age. As a boy, he once tipped a car that had fallen on his father, w...

Don't forget that Sword has a sister! Too many exclamation points already? OK, I'll try to contain myself. It's a pain in the ass coming up with a decent way to shade over black and white, but I've done it at least twice so far, and I kind of like the end results. It's subtle and looks sort of shiny without looking like the characters are covered in dirt. Working on Shield was the most challenging so far, I think, because the fine line between dirt and shine is hard to define when you go one piece at a time. Damn, I hate it when I start to rhyme. Anyway, here's Shield: Name: Shield Alias: Shirudo (Romanized Japanese for shield) Team Affiliations: The Yakuza, Two O'Clock Warriors, The Enforcers, Clockwork Race: Human Birthplace: Beijing, China Powers: Enhanced strength & reflexes, Antimatter energy shields. Bio: When their mother was pregnant with them, she traveled with their father to Beijing, where he had been transferred in lieu of a job promo...

Yes, I am quoting Deadpool again. And no, I don't mean boobs. I'm back with another heroine from my head. I created this next character as part of another Family Contest submission, the Two O'Clock Warriors. The Warriors are twin sisters with contrasting fighting styles, and part of a larger project I started before joining the Heromachine forums, called the Clockwork Project. Frank, Hi-N'Un, and Tempora are the twelve o'clock team, and the twins...well, their team name says it all. The Two O'Clock Warriors were my first submission to make the top-five poll in any contest, and I'm re-doing them with shading and new poses for your viewing pleasure, starting with the low-tech, offensive sister, Nihonto (whose name means sword in Japanese). Name: Sword Alias: Nihonto Team Affiliations: The Yakuza, Two O'Clock Warriors, The Enforcers, Clockwork Race: Human Birthplace: Beijing, China Powers/Abilities: Agility, Reflexes, Skilled hand-to-hand and with dai...

As promised, I have the last installment in the two-part Last Laugh series for you, and when I say "last," I mean The Last Samurai , and when I say The Last Samurai , I mean Tom Cruise, and when I say Tom Cruise, I mean your internal organs, and when I say your internal organs, I mean.... Sorry, I was watching that episode of Family Guy  last night where they go on a road trip to get Chris back into the scouts and wind up pretending to be Native Americans so they can get the station wagon back from a casino where Lois has become addicted to video poker. At home, Brian is about to learn the secret to happy life as a dog when the infomercial is interrupted by a One Life to Live marathon. So dammit, Ticketholders! I told you we had to get back to the damned review a damned week ago, dammit! So anyone have a guess why this re-issued review FROM May 17, 2004 (SWAT Ticket #5: The Last Laugh)  is called Baby, You A Song ? It's because this review makes me want to roll my...

I realize I forgot to give you Ticketholding, Heromachining, Cover Charging, Parade-marching, Sound-tracking, flashbacking folks my stay tuned message at the end of the last Heroines Are Made , and Lord, I apologize. Let's join the pygmies down in New Guinea for some cheap laughs, straight FROM May 17, 2004   (SWAT Ticket #5: The Last Laugh) This week on SWAT Ticket , Scary Movie sucks, Stuck on You is a high dose of conjoined comedy, and Tom Cruise earns the right to be Most Wanted. First up is Scary Movie 3 , a bad omen of all trilogies past and future. In SM3 , a reporter, a wannabe rapper, a farmer/ex-clergyman, and a little boy who sees dead people fight invading aliens and a killer videotape while inadvertently knocking the living crap out of each other in what are supposed to be comedic exchanges but turn into undesirable and unwatchable hordes of gratuitous and excessively moronic violence. Among the more humorous moments are the parodies of 8 Mile , The Others , Si...

Back again with another hero(ine) from my head. Remember how I said Frank Hallows' mother was a witch? Well, she is. Tempora was a character I created for the same Family contest (and in the same entry) as Frank and the Pharaoh. Again, I changed some things costume- and pose-wise, and added shading and better energy effects. Enjoy this latest character profile: Name: Tempora Alias: Tempora Hallows Team Affiliations: The Hallows, Clockwork Race: Human Birthplace: Rome, NY Powers/Abilities: Time manipulation, witchcraft Bio: Tempora Hallows is Frank's mother. She is a legacy witch, and the only surviving member of a coven of time-manipulators. A war has been waging for centuries between the temporals and the other elemental covens, but the temporals have been targeted most frequently for their alleged abuse of cosmic forces and their mercenary status among the wiccan community. She defected from the war and fled to ancient Egypt, where she met the man who would become Frank...

I finally got another character done, and you may have noticed that the title says Heroes Are Made  again, because I'm giving you a hero instead of a villain. I made this guy last year for the Family contest at HeroMachine, as part of the four-member superhero family called "The Hallows." He's partly inspired by the evil cowboy mummy from Bubba Ho-Tep . My first version of him basically had pants made out of bandages, two revolvers made of gold and mother-of-pearl, chest armor made of bones, and a sword-shotgun that made absolutely no sense but looked cool. I re-posed him, made significant changes to his uniform and color scheme, did away with the senseless gunblade for everyone's sake, and of course, shaded him. Say hello to Pharaoh Hi-N'Un XII: Name: Pharaoh Hi-N'Un XII Alias: Peter Hallows Team Affiliations: The Hallows, Clockwork Race: Human Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt Powers/Abilities: Expert marksman and gunfighter, extremely skilled with al...

I got through this one relatively quickly, even with the amount of shading I put into him. This dude's all new in my universe, and I think you might dig him. A brief word on the Knavium, though: don't worry about it yet because I will get to explaining it in the profile of a future character. And if you can get the Frankenstein and light bulb wordplay, then many energy bars and granola bars to you for being so smart. Name: Power Suit Alias: William Ernst Team Affiliations: The Power Suits Enemies: Frank Hallows, Deus-X, The Golem Queen Race: Human Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland Powers/Abilities: Superior intellect, copper/Knavium battle armor (Enhanced strength, Electro-kinetic weaponry, Absorbs electricity) Bio: William Ernst is the founder and CEO of the Nernst Corporation, a rival company of HallowGen that uses its comparable (but inferior) technology for military applications, often with highly controversial consequences. Ernst has been the orchestrator of many att...

You've been thunderstruck, Ticketholders and Heromachiners! It's really Heroes Are Made #2 , but that doesn't really make sense when the next character I have for you today isn't a hero, or even a heroine for that matter. In fact, this is an update on the very first villain I created with Heromachine. Since I had already made Frank Hallows (inspired by Frankenstein and his monster, and Iron Man, and Dean Koontz's Deucalion character from the Frankenstein series) for the Family contest, when the folks at Heromachine decided to throw a Public Domain Literature contest, I immediately started work on my interpretation of the bride of Frankenstein's monster, and the following character emerged. Name: The B.R.I.D.E. Alias: Elizabeth Victoria Stein Enemies: Frank Hallows, Deus-X Race: Android Birthplace: Ithaca, NY Powers: Superhuman strength, Energy claws, Absorbs (downloads) human memory by touch. Bio: Dr. Elisabeth Victoria Stein (Evie to her friends) was ...