Appendix V
Secret Villain Dossiers from the Files of the Heroic Legion
Author’s Notes
- The following “dossiers” are presented as “ripped from the files of the Heroic Legion.”
- I often write little personality sketches for characters, even if they’re relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of the book. I took my notes and expanded on them for these short bios.
- Zeus Caesar was a very powerful individual, although I really don’t know what the difference is among the categories of supers. I guess the “Class V” classification makes Caesar one of the most powerful beings in the Crimsonstreak universe.
- It’s interesting that Caesar felt Julius Caesar’s leadership triumvirate was responsible for the leader’s downfall, especially given that Caesar ended up following the Chaos-Lightspeed-Imperator Chris triumvirate.
- Basically, Caesar surrounded himself with a bunch of buff guys. Think 300.
- Capturing Caesar in a bottle doesn’t really make much sense, but it’s a play on the old phrase “catching lightning in a bottle.”
- In comics, a person’s background often reflects their power. In Crossworld’s case, that’s definitely the truth. Her teleportation ability is an outgrowth of her family’s tendency to move from place to place.
- Crossworld and Colonel Chaos hooked up in their younger days. She still carries a flame for the former supervillain, and harbors resentment toward Miss Lightspeed for “ruining” Colonel Chaos.
- Like Chaos and Lightspeed, Crossworld has aged at a dramatically slower rate than those around her. Chris even comments on her attractiveness while locked away at Clermont.
- I spent a summer as an intern at a TV station in Baltimore, Maryland. One of my fellow interns was a student at Johns Hopkins. I decided to reference those in Dark Plague’s bio.
- Dark Plague isn’t your typical supervillain; he has powers he can’t control and it briefly drove him to villainy. He quickly recanted his ways and agreed to go to Clermont voluntarily.
- The Mimicry character is a very sad one. She wanted to be a movie star, but couldn’t quite make it. Failure drove her insane. She was pushed over the edge when Colonel Chaos forced her to take Miss Lightspeed’s form indefinitely. It’s a darker side of the novel that doesn’t come out very often.
- I think it’s sad that she was buried with “little fanfare” in her hometown.
- Red Crush is only mentioned in passing in the book as an inmate at Clermont. He’s a Soviet analogue for Captain America. Instead of a shield, he has “crush gauntlets.”
- I find Red Crush intriguing because he was so angered by Mikhail Gorbachev that he actually tried to kill him. Thankfully, a few international superheroes were there to save the day: Double Decker, Irish Temper, and Hitler’s More Successful Second Cousin. As for the latter hero, I’m not sure what “more successful” means in this context.
- A recurring joke in the book is Fourth-Reich Rich and his plan to turn the rest of the world into Nazi Zombies. Oddly enough, the Nazi Zombie scheme isn’t mentioned in his bio.
- Sylvester Striker’s story is a sad one, too. His powers drove him mad, and he agreed to go to Clermont. Once he made peace with himself, he asked to see his father, only to find out that he had passed away. All he left his son was a copy of the Book of Mormon. We know both the fate of that book and Striker.
- I almost made Stoner Cheetah’s real name “James Blunt,” but soon realized that I would be tempted to kill that character. The name isn’t very original. I may as well have named him “Joe Marijuana.”
- The Stoner Cheetah bio was the last thing written for the book. It’s fitting that it appears at the very end.
- So, yeah. Stoner Cheetah’s from California. I know, I know. Mind-blowingly original.
- And that’s it. That’s the end of the author’s commentary. Bye.
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