Characters Are Made #21: The Hallow-Machine Special

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Ex-HeroMachiner

and Ticketmaster.

Since my Characters Are Made series' first entry was a TBT '25 post somewhat recently (on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn), some of my first characters were based on the Universal Monsters and archetypal Halloween costumes, and Halloween is this week, I thought I'd compile my character bios for the "TimeDrop Comics Universe"'s first family (whom I created with HeroMachine 3 many years before Flash became one of the numerous casualties of 2020, along with human decency, sanity, safety, intelligence, and millions of lives). HeroMachine, as I've mentioned before, was one of the most powerful creative Flash programs ever made, with a thriving, welcoming, helpful community that still exists today despite the program itself no longer functioning as it once did.

Sometime in 2013, my fictional "comic book" Universe began with the creation of Frank Hallows, a character who took a few origin story cues from Iron Man and strong design inspiration from Frankenstein's Monster. In his original design, the suit was more of a powered harness than an armor, with more exposed skin, and I hadn't yet learned the art of shading and masking with gradients like I employed with this "New Universe" version. If I were to redesign him now, I'd probably change the color of the suit and streamline it by getting rid of the extra arms and covering his biceps.

Frank and the rest of the Hallows family were created for a character design contest on HeroMachine's website that year, and I grew the Universe from there by expanding into a larger, Avengers-like team based on the hours of the day (with the Hallows being the twelve o'clock group).

Name: Frank Hallows

Team Affiliations: The Hallows, Clockwork
Race: Human
Birthplace: Ithaca, NY
Powers/Abilities: Superior intellect, Psychically controlled battle armor (Enhanced strength, Electro-kinetic weaponry, Time travel), Paraplegic when not wearing armor.
Bio: Frank Hallows is the founder and CEO of HallowGen, and creator of the Psionic Activation Taskmaster Conveyance Harness (P.A.T.C.H. suit). He was paralyzed from the waist down during an accident at his company, and must wear the P.A.T.C.H. suit at all times if he is to function properly in the world. HallowGen's research has caught the eye of many competitors and terrorist groups, so although it is essentially a prosthesis, Frank has modified the P.A.T.C.H. in recent months to function as an offensive weapon that focuses ionized air into electric projectiles.

This next character is a weird one with a level of historical and geographical sense to his story that approaches zero, but I still love how goofy it all is, and I based his design partly on 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 here, made significant changes to his outfit and color scheme, did away with the senseless gunblade for everyone's sake, and of course, shaded him. If I were to redesign him now, I like pretty much everything about him, with the exception of his skin tone being too Caucasian. It'd be a relatively simple fix to darken and olive him up to look more Egyptian (which is what he's supposed to be).
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 all manner of ranged weaponry, former Egyptian monarch, rumored to be more than 2,500 years old.
Bio: Pharaoh Hi-N'Un XII is Frank's father. After spurning the advances of Frank's mother, who is a time-travelling witch, the Pharaoh was mummified and entombed, cursed by the witch with eternal sleep. Some time in the American Wild West era, the tomb was disturbed and the curse interrupted. Pharaoh Hi-N'Un XII soon took up a gun and became a truly immortal folk hero, with his name being attributed to the classic midday duels for honor that marked his life and the history of the American West.

So, we have a monster-inspired robot and a cowboy mummy.... How about a witch?

Next is Tempora Doce-Hallows, who is Frank's mother and the Pharaoh's ex-lover because of her wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey magic powers. Her original design had a 90s exhibitionist look with a steampunk belt that was woefully simplistic and incongruous with her story (she would not have blended into Egyptian society with that fit at all). So, I changed some things costume- and pose-wise, and added shading and better energy effects, as was my style at the time.

Name: Tempora Doce
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's father. The two fell in love, but Egyptian custom would not allow their mixed-race relationship (a fact Tempora was ignorant of when the Pharaoh rejected her and she cursed him with eternal sleep).
Upon returning to her own time, Tempora discovered she was pregnant with Frank, and put aside her mystic dabbling to raise the child. During her pregnancy, however, Tempora was prone to uncontrollable bouts of astral travel (which amounted to little more than extremely vivid precognitive dreams), and soon learned who her son was meant to become and how through him she would be reunited with her lost love.

As you can see in the above group shot of my original Clockwork designs, I had at first decided that Frank Hallows would have a pet robot werewolf (model X-2), ironically named Silver. Nine of the characters depicted received updated designs, and I would have eventually done them all if I hadn't brought my own financial stupidity crashing down on myself and forced myself to adult instead, but in the planning process at the time, Silver was retconned out of the "New Universe" as part of the origin stories for my takes on Hansel and Gretel, who are part of a more sprawling, Clockwork-adjacent, "Witch Wars" story involving a fictional god-metal known as Knavium.

I made mention in Tempora's bio that a war was raging between covens of elemental "Witches" (humans who have inherited certain Knavium-based alloys that somehow occur naturally in their bodies, and are therefore gifted with a command over specific cosmic elements like time, fire, electricity, or fate). You may also remember that no coven or Witch is strictly good or evil, except as they are viewed by one another or how their actions affect normal human society, so there is still plenty of room in the "Witch Wars" story line for a few villains.
This is my first "Witch Wars" villain, and the first member of the Society of Foes (a Legion of Doom-like team based on fairy tale characters and authors who have dealt with witches). I took inspiration from the X-2 Silver, Red Riding Hood, and Hansel & Gretel, to create Greta Holz.

Name: Gretel/Redwulf
Alias: Greta Holz
Team Affiliations: Society of Foes, Power Suits
Enemies: Frank Hallows, The B.R.I.D.E., Farrah O'Ren, The Coven of Iarann (metal and tech Witches), Witches in general, and anyone else with Knavium-derived powers.
Race: Human/Lycandroid
Birthplace: Berlin, Germany
Powers/Abilities: Iarannian heart/power core, Ferro-Knavium skin, Ability to harness energies similar to Iarannian magic, Enhanced strength and reflexes, Can transform into a cybernetic werewolf at will.
Bio: When she was a child, Greta Holz and her brother, Hans, lost their parents to a member of the Coven of Iarann during a weapons test gone awry. Hans sought vengeance against the Coven, and Greta was a willing participant. Taking steps to ensure her family's death was avenged, Greta Holz took a job at HallowGen as a member of the X-2 development team, until she was caught in the explosion that paralyzed Frank Hallows, and suffered near-fatal heart damage.
While Greta worked and gathered the necessary intel to build the array of anti-Iarannian weaponry that was her and Hans' secret project, her brother put his finely honed surgical skills to use, hunting down members of the Coven and using that weaponry to cut out their hearts.
As much as he hated the Coven for killing his parents, when Hans heard of his sister's injuries, he was forced to do the unthinkable: replacing her heart with one of his Iarannian "trophies."
Greta survived the procedure, but woke up as a humanoid machine full of power she didn't understand and a hunger for Iarannian hearts that she couldn't control. Days and weeks passed without incident, her hunger sated by daily consumption of the hearts of her enemies, not knowing that the more hearts she ate, the more magical energy she absorbed. One day at HallowGen, she unwittingly absorbed the X-2 parts she was working on, incorporating them into her body in much the same way that a Witch of Iarann is able to, and transforming into a rampaging Lycandroid.
Greta no longer requires her "daily meal," and has yet to discover a way to remove the X-2 technology from her body. But with her brother's help, she was eventually able to get her Redwulf transformation under control and resume her quest for vengeance.
She has also been enlisted in various schemes by enemies of Frank Hallows, including the Power Suits and The B.R.I.D.E. (whom she now considers an enemy), but the path to her—and her brother's—true objective lies with the Society of Foes, a group devoted to the complete extermination of all the elemental covens.

I also designed her transformed state (Redwulf) and elaborated on her Bio, which was already one of my more substantial character rundowns at the time.

Name: Redwulf
Alias: Greta Holz
Team Affiliations: Society of Foes, Power Suits
Enemies: Frank Hallows, The B.R.I.D.E., Farrah O'Ren, The Coven of Iarann, Witches in general, and anyone else with Knavium-derived powers.
Race: Lycandroid
Birthplace: Berlin, Germany/HallowGen
Powers/Abilities: P.A.T.C.H. power core (powered by Iarannian magical energies), Ferro-Knavium-infused body, Enhanced strength and reflexes, Energy claws.
Bio: Greta Holz took a job at HallowGen as a member of the X-2 development team, using her position to illegally obtain the intel and technology she and her brother required to take vengeance upon the Coven of Iarann, one of whom accidentally killed their parents while testing out a new thermal weapon.
When she was caught in the explosion that paralyzed Frank Hallows, Greta suffered a near-fatal heart injury and had to have her heart replaced with that of one of the witches her brother had killed. Greta survived the procedure, but woke up as a humanoid machine full of power she didn't understand and a hunger for Iarannian hearts she couldn't control.
Days and weeks passed without incident, her hunger sated by daily consumption of the hearts of her enemies, not knowing that the more hearts she ate, the more magical energy she absorbed. One day at HallowGen, she unwittingly absorbed the X-2 parts she was working on, incorporating them into her body in much the same way that a Witch of Iarann is able to. That is how she became Redwulf for the first time.
As Redwulf, she went on a rampage, forcing a tenuous, temporary alliance between Hans Holz, Frank Hallows, and Frank's newest employee, Juto Abanme (a.k.a. Deus-X). Working together, they were able to get Greta's Redwulf transformation under control. She no longer requires her "daily meal," but even with Frank's reluctant help, she has yet to discover a way to remove the X-2 technology from her body, a fact that she holds against Frank with a vengeance.
She has also been enlisted in various schemes by enemies of Frank Hallows, including the Power Suits and The B.R.I.D.E. (whom she now considers an enemy), but the path to her—and her brother's—true objective lies with the Society of Foes, a group devoted to the complete extermination of all the elemental covens.

Speaking of hearts and scary things, I was reminded (in the process of compiling this post) that I had a myocarditis scare back in mid-2014. I was out of the blogging game for two weeks as a result, but somehow I managed to pop out a new character, using one of the community-generated poses as a base.

He was an attempt at folding characters from "Gale Force" (a small, sci-fi Oz collection of Machined Heroes and villains I made in early 2013) into the New Universe. While not a member of the Hallows family or a monster-inspired character, he is an evil heart surgeon and Witch slayer who accidentally turned his sister into a werewolf cyborg, so...I'm including him.

Hans Holz is equal parts Tin Woodsman, Huntsman (as in Snow White), and Hansel.

Name: The Huntsman
Alias: Hans Holz
Team Affiliations: Society of Foes
Enemies: Farrah O'Ren, The Coven of Iarann, Witches in general, and anyone else with Knavium-derived powers.
Race: Human
Birthplace: Berlin, Germany
Powers/Abilities: Skilled heart surgeon, Access to HallowGen and Iarannian technology, Enhanced strength and reflexes, Cybernetic suit that is immune to Iarannian technomancy. Twin energy axes that can cut through almost anything.
Bio: When he was a child, Hans Holz and his sister, Greta, lost their parents to a member of the Coven of Iarann during a weapons test gone awry. Hans sought vengeance against the Coven, and Greta was a willing participant.
As the world's most prestigious heart surgeon, Hans forged beneficial black market relationships with foreign criminal organizations such as the Milieu and Yakuza, which, along with his sister's key position as an employee at HallowGen, led to his amassing a formidable arsenal of high-tech weaponry which he uses to hunt down witches (especially members of the Coven of Iarann). His weapon of choice is a cybernetic suit of armor that has been programmed and warded against Iarannian influence, and in a twist of irony, he wields a pair of energy axes which he had scaled down from those used by Iarann's TWM mechs. His axes can cut through almost anything, and have been encoded with the same programming and spells as his suit. He does however employ smaller weapons when engaged in his favorite activity: removing the hearts of Iarannian witches, which he keeps as trophies or trades to his criminal associates in exchange for use of their vast resources.
A tragic course of events led Hans to implant his sister with the heart of a recently slain Iarannian witch, ultimately transforming her into a thing she greatly despises, and forcing him to align with Frank Hallows in order to subdue Greta's rampaging new form.
He and Greta have since joined the Society of Foes, an organization of powerful individuals bent on the total genocide of the Elemental covens. But his sister's condition and other recent events have led Hans to question their chosen path.

I was originally going to stop the compilation here, but seeing as how I intended to only include members of the Hallows family and Halloween-adjacent character designs, and I've already broken half of that rule, I figured I would go ahead and break the other half by including two more designs to get things back on track. This next one 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 once a prominent scientist at HallowGen, contracted by founder Frank Hallows to research the connection between computers and the human brain. Her work would soon form the basis for the interface Frank now uses to control the P.A.T.C.H. suit. But Dr. Stein's ambitions reached much higher. She wished to push the boundaries of ethical science by attempting to have human brains directly interface with computer hardware, and even convert human memory into binary data for storage on computer mainframes.

Fearing the devastatingly godlike potential this would have in the wrong hands, Frank shut down Dr. Stein's program and fired her, retaining the rights to all of Stein's research and keeping her findings under the highest level of security possible.

Weeks went by without incident, but Dr. Evie Stein would return in force, breaking into HallowGen with a bang and escaping the ensuing chaos with her research and several million dollars' worth of stolen HallowGen technology.
The bomb she planted below her former employer's office would leave Frank paralyzed from the waist down, dependent on the newly completed P.A.T.C.H. suit for his mobility and survival.
Meanwhile, the disgraced Dr. Evie Stein would continue her work in secret, fashioning the Bionic Remote Interactive Digital Envoy from her cache of stolen P.A.T.C.H. and X-2 technology and taking the fatal risk of using her own brain as the upload source for what would prove to be her final experiment.
The transfer was a success. Dr. Evie Stein's human body was now an empty, soulless shell. But what did it matter when she had a stronger, faster cybernetic body at her command? She would never learn the answer to that question, for the collection of firing synapses that comprised the essence of Dr. Elisabeth Victoria Stein would quickly fall victim to the numerous security subroutines embedded in the patchwork of stolen HallowGen tech, leaving behind only a heavily armed, psychologically unstable automaton with a now-baseless hatred of Frank Hallows and an unwavering desire to possess as much human knowledge as possible. Beware, for The B.R.I.D.E. is alive!

Fittingly, this final character in the Hallow-Machine compilation Special is from my thirteenth issue of the Characters Are Made series, and she's a Witch.

At the time of that original posting, I was still a big fan of Once Upon A Time, and had recently begun reading (but not yet reviewing) Zenescope's Grimm Fairy Tales comic books for character inspirations. Drawing upon the former, as well as the original Wizard Of Oz, I continued the Elemental Witch character series that I began with Tempora to bring you a Wicked Witch-based Witch of Fire as follows:

Name: Flame Girl (II)
Alias: Theodora Kindle
Team Affiliations: The Coven of Lasair, The Hit Squad
Enemies: Tempora, Linda Norgood, Fifth Hour, Society Of Foes
Race: Human
Birthplace: Belfast, Ireland
Powers/Abilities: Pyrokinesis, Skilled Hand-to-hand fighter, Utility belt, Fireproof skin.
Bio: Like all members of the Coven of Lasair (also known as the Coven of the Flame outside of Ireland), Theodora Kindle was born with an alloy of Knavium and sulfur in her blood. Effects of the alloy include the ability to ignite combustible substances and pale green, fireproof skin. They are the most brutal and physically destructive coven involved in the ongoing Wiccan war (though some, like the Holz twins, would disagree). As there are not always incendiary chemicals close at hand, many Lasair witches wear a utility belt equipped with a variety of explosive and flammable materials to use against their enemies. The Coven of Lasair is chiefly in conflict with Linda Norgood and the Coven of Tonnta (a group of water Witches), but Theodora was singled out from her coven to hunt down the deserter time Witch, Tempora. During her trip to New York to assassinate Tempora, Theodora was approached by a supposed representative of a government security agency and chosen to join a meta-human team called The Hit Squad under the codename Flame Girl. The Hit Squad's first target: the members of Fifth Hour (Fever, Rush, and Shadow).

Notes: You may notice a few things I've introduced here. First, I have labeled her the second Flame Girl. Flame Girl is a character from the vast graveyard of public domain comic books that I adapted for a contest in 2013, making her a daredevil motorcyclist who gains her powers during an accident with her favorite stunt, the Ring of Fire. The first Flame Girl is still alive, and who's to say there won't be others down the road?

Second, the Hit Squad. At the time, I had planned on building a team of meta-human assassins whose job it is to eliminate their own kind at the behest of what is believed to be the American government.

Which brings me to Fifth Hour. They are a family of research scientists sent to investigate a unique concentration of Knavium alloys who gain superhuman abilities when they make contact with it (clearly taking inspiration from the Fantastic Four's origin). I created them for the Family Contest in 2013, and intended to give them New Universe redesigns in the future. They are the dark, fire, and blue speedster characters depicted in the above group shot.

Had I continued my HeroMachine proliferation, the Society of Foes would have been an anti-Wiccan villain team of undetermined size based on various fairy tale characters (and authors) who have had run-ins with witches. Their leader would have been a man in a seismokinetic suit called the Quaker (in punny reference to the religious sect who also refer to themselves as the Society Of Friends, as well as modernizing and fictionalizing the Salem Witch Trials).

And finally, I had planned to give you a hero who could finally make sense of this whole Knavium business (a redesign of Professor Jack Card, a.k.a. The Knave, depicted bottom-left in the group shot), because he's the guy who discovered and named the stuff.

Stay Tuned for more comic book madness and character creation (the latter being done by a certain shady Queen this time) in tomorrow's finale to the Wonderland Ongoing Volume One single-issue coverage.

Happy Halloween, be sure your head and heart are always in the right place, and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't go broke in a Flash, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my spooky content.

Ticketmaster,

Out.