I was following the thread on level cap and new content and it got me to thinking about comics and how certain characters never really seem to go past a certain "level."

Take Daredevil, for example. He's an urban hero. He's got the heightened senses, sure, but beyond that, in game terms, he should be fighting Hellions and Outcasts his whole career. That guy should never really be trying to give Galactus a bloody nose in PI.

That got me to thinking about levels and relative content. I've been playing the game for a little over two and a half years, and I'm curious what others think about this.

Consider how long it takes your average toon to go from level 10 to level 20. Now think about how much content exists for toons at that level. Now do the same for a toon between level 40 and level 50.

Is the ratio right? I'm also curious to know the ratio of level 40-50 toons versus the number of toons below the 40 mark. Speaking for myself, I have entire servers full of low-level toons, perhaps half a dozen in the 30-40 range, and only two level 50's.

I don't have any answers here. I'm just curious to know what others think. Plus, it was a chance to show off my shiny new icon. :-)

Hullo, all! This is the first time I've actually posted in this community, rather than commenting, so... formal greetings!

Anyway, my subject tonight: One of the more requested features recently has been fallen heroes and redeemed villains. Obviously, if this were implemented, we'd see heroic Masterminds and Corruptors and villainous Defenders and Scrappers. My question: Can you think of any examples of these in superhero fiction? That is, heroic characters who seem to belong to a City of Villains archetype, or villainous characters who seem to belong to a City of Heroes archetype?

A couple examples off the top of my head:
The Hulk is definitely a heroic (or at least antiheroic) Brute. When Hulk get madder, Hulk get stronger!
The Juggernaut is definitely closer to a Tank than a Brute. So is the Blob, though in a completely opposite way.

What do you think, sirs?

...but I just got finished teaming with Mercedes Lackey and Gail Simone.

Wow!

Current Mood: bouncy

;-)


toothpastefordinner.com

City of Heroes Issue 12 Comic Book is Now Available!

Direct Download - PDF

Forums Discussion Thread

Super hero web comic blah blah blah

( behind a cut so people who aren't interested can just skip it. also some swear words be warned )

Current Mood: amused

Off topic but still related...

This Saturday May 3rd is Free Comic Book Day (in Canada & The USA)... so if you can tare your selves away from Paragon for an hour or two make your way down to your local participating Comic Book Shop and help support literacy by picking up some FREE comic books :)

http://www.freecomicbookday.com/

Cheers!
@Dygital Punk

Today's Backwards Compatible strip talks about City of Heroes and costuming - enjoy!

For those that don't know it's 24 hour Comic Day. It's a day where folks try and make a 24 page comic in a 24 hour period. My friends are attempting and I am doing frequent updates on my website. Feel free to check it out at www.thed20.net

What archetypes, powers, and characters from comics are represented in this game? I'm not saying they don't exist, but I got to thinking and realized there are a ton that don't represent any characters. That said, I thought it might be fun to try to actually figure out who in comics is represented by the powers in the game.

Please note, I'm not saying that the representation or lack there of is a bad thing. I can't think of any comic Dark Melee Scrappers, but that doesn't mean I dislike Shadow Mauling some Sky Raider into a bloody pulp arrested guy teleported to jail.

So yeah, go hog wild. Come up with a set and say who you think it's reflective of. When the smoke clears, I'm interested in seeing the ones who don't have an analogue.

I just saw the announcement of the new power sets for issue 11 and I'm left asking the question "Where are the archetypes?"

Seriously... "Where are the archetypes?"

Archetypes (in comic boooks) are character types that repeat themselves.

Good examples of ACTUAL archetypes would be:

* Stretching/Elongated Scrappers. Examples: Mr. Fantastic, Plasticman, the Elongated Man

* Size changing Tankers: Examples: Giant man, Stature, Giganta

* Speedbased Scrappers. Examples: The Flash, Quicksilver, Blur

* Luck/Probability Controllers. Examples: Scarlet Witch, Longshot, Hex, Arcanna

... I could go on... my point is these are real archetypes... they repeat themselves across stories and publishing lines (DC/Marvel...).

So why don't we see THESE added to the game instead of .... "willpower"??? "dual weilding"???

I'm confuzzled. Manticore is teamed up with Recluse? Recluse has run away from something? Whaaa?

Whatever I hated both of them anyway. Recluse is a pretty flat 1 dimensional villain, and Manticore never seems to have a consistent personality beyond "sassy."

You know who would be a great villain? Statesman.

( This is comedy, please take it in that spirit. )

EDIT: Now with Pictures!

as a followup to an earlier post i made inviting members of the community to a comic jam effort, there's now a website devoted to the project: www.gruntwerk.com/sketchy. check it out.

we've just started so there's nothing up quite yet but there's information about the whole effort up there. if anyone else still wants to get added to the list of contributors, let me know. as it is, some members of this community (duskrider3740, baruthewolf and chathandle) have need of art-buddies to team up with to illustrate their story contributions. care to help 'em out?

in any case, check out the work in progress (or contribute, if you feel the spirit move you). quite a few members of the community are involved, so your support and encouragement will reach people you know and have teamed with.

UPDATE: duskrider3740 has been paired up with nemesis_divina!

admittedly, this is rather off-topic but, hey, the community is a pretty creative one both in illustration and creative writing and the vast majority of us are indeed fans of the comic book form. so, we'll see how well this is received. mods, please feel free to delete if this isn't cool with you.

that said..

i posted a challenge in my journal just now and thought to open it up to members of the city of heroes livejournal community as well:

( the creative challenge, cross-posted in my personal journal )

right now, i'm just trying to amass the aforementioned list. i figured what with all the artists, writers and comicbook fans in this here community, this has to tickle someone's fancy. if there's enough interest, i'll post further details and guidelines.

so, anyone down? comment here or in the original post (the list of interested folks will be posted there) to lemme know. thanks!

Found this in my wanderings to scientific literature sites for work today.

news @ nature.com - The tangled web of super-heroes - The Marvel Universe has social webs similar to our own, says Philip Ball. In other words, they're sexist and elitist.

and

[cond-mat/0202174] Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network

The publication preprint is from 2002. I'm surprised it took this long for this paper to be noticed. The one trackback listed on arxiv.org leads to:

Spider-Man spins a web of contacts - Physics World - physicsworld.com

This one is listed in the reference list at the bottom:

[0708.2410] How to become a superhero

You should be able to view these, since Nature tends to be looser about who can see the news items on the site (the section of the journal that contains the actual peer-reviewed papers tends to be locked behind subscription/sitelicense-only locks), but I'm not sure about the arxiv.org links.

Can someone on pinnacle help me out with a transfer?
I would like to give my natural scrapper, Katmandu a pair of piston boots my main, Kid Terigon acquired. I don't really have any buddies on pinnacle that I'd trust enough for something like this.
Thanks
I dont need the help anymore, but I thought I'd share this just for kicks
( Taken from Deadpool-GLI Summer Fun Special )

Okay so most of my predictions for this issue didn't make it through. That's largely because not even I could have predicted it would be this bad...
( Somewhat perverse fun and mockery awaits behind this cut... )

After reading the comments on my original post about the CoH comics (see a few posts down), I decided that the Top Cow series deserved another read. Read them I did. Many people were complaining that it was unfair that I was claiming that the TC series were a cheesy clumsy way to introduce new game content. Most notably people pointed to issues 4-9 as not being at all focused on new game content. This I will grant. Please note though that during this time, almost all issue releases focused on CoV content. I did particularly enjoy reading issues 7-9 again, but this is not to say that almost all of these comics have crippling problems.

Under the link is a full, nicely documented full color review. If you read nothing at LEAST read the review of Issue 10. I could not believe what I found there.

( Blow-up doll O-faces, Photoshop Filters, Tokenism, Pole dancing, LJ icons, and characters doing exactly what was released or going to be released in the next issue. )

I have just finished reading the Blue King series and I've gone through the Top Cow series a little while ago, and I have to say that while the artwork in Top Cow was superior, the storylines in the Blue King series flowed much better. The main reason? The comic wasn't SOLELY a vehicle to introduce new content. I can already predict the next comic for you simply based off of i10 Previews:

( Let's make a comic that is about a video game rather than expanding the universe that game takes place in!... )

Anyone notice that Outsiders has made the buttcape an official in-the-comics costume piece? Perhaps I'm not as well versed in comics as I should be, but Katana's new outfit is the only time I've ever seen it.