The various threats in the setting, both super-powered and supernatural. For the main character page see here.
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Supervillains
Vehemence
Vehemence/Kevin (last name unknown)
A large, Mysterious Stranger who is associated with the villains who attack the heroes at the restaurant, eventually claiming to have organized the action, but who doesn't do much for them for most of the fight. Then he turns against them — before challenging all the heroes still standing at once. While he obviously has super powers, he keeps their precise nature quiet to begin with; just to start with, though, he is able to pass unnoticed through a tornado of flying rocks, and he drops Opal and Vekter with little apparent difficulty after shrugging off some heavy attacks.
- Abstract Eater: His main (and possibly only true) superpower; Vehemence is "an innate user of vehemic energy ... sometimes called vistric energy." The layman's version: he gains power from violence. He makes his debut by hanging around an all out super brawl between a superhero team and a team-up of villains. Only when it's over does he enter the fray himself, now strong enough to go toe-to-toe with one of the most powerful super beings in the world and only making himself stronger for it. If Dabbler is correct then he needs to consume it regularly to maintain his health.
- The Ace: To a degree. He's one of only three people to ever fight Maxima to a standstill, even when she had one of the other two and a large group of other supers on her side. On the other hand, the nature of his powers means that he's only this powerful under certain circumstances.
- Achilles' Heel: Even when powered up on Vehemic energy, he still needs to breathe. This makes him an easy victim for Halo, since she can open a wormhole into outer space and dump him there until he passes out.
- Affably Evil:
- His exact motives are kept quiet for a while, but he's certainly not on the side of the heroes.
- However, after showing up for the big fight in a nice suit, he has a short, amiable conversation with Sydney, indicates to her which of the other villains looks most worrying, and then privately hopes that she doesn't get herself killed. He becomes far less affable once he starts to fight, but even then he manages a few jokes during the pauses between punches, and he goes to the trouble of preserving his modesty to avoid shocking his opponents too much.
- He has a dedication to etiquette that verges on Blue-and-Orange Morality. He'll beat your face in, but he (almost) never swears, and he generally tries to leave his opponents alive if only so they can come back to commit more violence later. He even pointed out to Arc-SWAT that he probably caved in Vekter's ribs and that they should send someone to check on him before the fight really got going.
- He gives a fake Motive Rant to Maxima about planning to start a massive amount of global conflict before admitting that war actually isn't his style and he's far more likely to go hang out at a soccer riot for a good time than try to get an armed conflict going. War is "unruly" in his eyes; he wants "a good scrap", not something that gets a lot of people killed. In fact he only considers killing Maxima once she's established that she is able and willing to kill him.
- When explaining the different translations for "Malum" ("Cataclysm, damage, drama, evil, harm, torment, etc.), Sydney pipes up with "Also apple!" - Vehemence just smiles and agrees that it's a valid translation.
- Long after being arrested, he agrees to become a sparring partner for Arc-Swat to keep their skills sharp, as well as to keep himself sustained, and is amenable to the conditions set by them regarding his allowed powers.
- The Ageless: Vehemence's age is unclear; it's not even certain that he's a mortal. However, his knowledge of occult secrets and a casual reference to being present at "the L.A. Race Riots" (which race-related riots in L.A. he means is unclear) suggest that he's certainly been around for some time.
- Ambiguously Evil: While he attacks Arc-SWAT with clear intent to take them down, and he manipulated dozens of people into a super-powered battle, he's not shown any desire to cause lasting harm past killing Maxima, and then only because she's willing and able to kill him. He's expressed hope that Sydney survives the night, and prompted Arc-SWAT to check on a guy he just hit, as he may have broken some ribs. Furthermore, he shows no real animosity or malice towards our heroes, even complimenting their fighting ability, and obliging Sydney in some light banter.
- Ambiguously Human: It's not certain whether or not he's human/mortal or not especially given the fact that the only other users of vehemic energy that Dabbler knows of are a type of demon, and the hints that he might be The Ageless.
- Arc Villain: Of the press conference/first superbrawl arc.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Vehemence first appears
wearing a suit and a tolerably nice hat. - Bald of Evil: All part of his shaven-headed thug look.
- Batman Gambit: He counted on ARC-SWAT to take a "punch first, ask questions later" approach to the supervillain ambush he'd orchestrated to help fuel his powers.
- Blood Knight: One of the explanations he initially offers for his own actions — and the one that Maxima finds most plausible. He draws power from "vehemic energy", the psychic energy of violence itself. He engaged Arc-SWAT because superheroes produce otherwise impossible levels of localized violence, which in turn gives him extraordinary levels of power. What's he plan to do with it? Apparently nothing, he just likes the feeling.
- Chekhov's Gunman: First seen in the first panel in a strip showing the potential reactions of villains to the press conference, then spends the early stages of the superbrawl just hanging in the background. Given that subsequent panels in that strip included a huge demon (possibly archdemon) with an axe to grind against Dabbler, as well as Deus, this could mean that he's actually a Disk-One Final Boss or Starter Villain if the other villains shown also end up being Chekhov's gunmen...
- Combat Pragmatist: He grabs Anvil's hair and swings her around with it when he fights her. He also has no objection to simply trying to kill Maxima after she manages to hurt him.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Vehemence appears to embody the trope, which is invoked, lampshaded, discussed, and Played Straight by and with him. See the main page for more on this. Actually, it turns out that he draws power from violence, so being present at a big fight which thins out both sides powers him up, thereby justifying the trope in his case.
- Cuteness Overload: Is held in a cell with Kirby's Epic Yarn in order to keep him relaxed. He also has a lousy T-shirt, a Mario star, a poster of Twilight, and a lot of weed smoke.
- Deadpan Snarker: He has his moments, such as when Sydney claims Dabbler (in full succubus form) is from Jersey.Vehemence: Oh, is that where they keep the Aetheon thrones? Pull the other one.
Sydney: Not New Jersey, obviously. Old Jersey. - Diminishing Returns for Balance: One of the few things that makes it possible to beat him. Hit him hard enough, and the power he gets from the violence does not outweigh the damage he receives from the strike.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Sydney's plan to stop him involves getting Dabbler to jump rope in front of him (causing her breasts to jiggle), countering his vehemic energy with Dabbler's tantric energy, and causing him to start losing focus and strength.
- Double Agent: Implied then averted. His actions in standing back from the big fight and then betraying his own side seem to hint at the trope initially, but he eventually claims not to be working for anyone but himself, and he's certainly not there to help the heroes.
- Early-Bird Cameo: He is depicted several pages before his first "actual" appearance, here.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- He uses this as justification for wanting to outright kill Maxima, though his actual rationale falls under Pragmatic Villainy.Vehemence: Ironically, you're actually too violent for me.
- He also makes it clear that he wouldn't start actual wars just to drum up violence (after joking about destroying the Kaaba, an act that would set fire to the entire Islamic world) when more contained acts like Brazilian football riots would be more than enough.
- He uses this as justification for wanting to outright kill Maxima
- Evil Feels Good: Implied to be a part of the reason that Vehemence is so dedicated to accumulating vehemic energy.
- Exact Words: Vehemence is very careful in what he says. He almost always speaks in terms of his capabilities, implying the threat that he might actually use those capabilities. This is because he doesn't really have any grand ambitions or political goals. He really does just love violence, thanks to his ability to feed on vehemic energy. In fact, he hates the kind of mayhem he was threatening, since too much violence now means he doesn't get any violence later.
- Gag Penis: Judging by the reactions of the cast (including an "Oh myyy..."), Vehemence gains one when he hulks out.
- Genius Bruiser:
- His primary powers are basically Super-Strength and robustness, and he looks the part of a hulking thuggish bruiser. However, he is also very shrewd and well-informed.
- He is able to manipulate both other villains and heroes into acting in ways that suit him.
- He recognizes Dabbler's supernatural nature and laughs off her cover story, implying exceptional knowledge of the occult.
- He later casts a kind of spell that causes the defeated villains to wake up and makes them and the heroes to fight among themselves to get more vehemic power.
- He also uses the vast amount of power he gains from the super-brawl at the restaurant to explore the limits of what can be achieved from his power, and theorizes mid-fight about possible strengths and weaknesses that the heroes (Anvil and Maxima in particular) might possess in reaction to his and others' own abilities.
- Genre Savvy: He not only seems to be on the same wavelength as Sydney, he says "Dun. Dun. Dunnnnnn." at a crucial moment, and refers to Sydney's genre savviness with amused respect. And then there's the moment when he pokes at Dabbler's dropped sword with a stick in a very Sydney-like manner.
- Godzilla Threshold: He's usually careful not to kill the people he fights, since doing so would starve him of his power source, but after powering up as much as he can he goes in for the kill on Maxima, because he regards her as the only hero who stands a chance of stopping him, and then only because she's willing and able to kill him if needed.
- Healing Factor: Uses this to regenerate his eye, tooth and arm. Plus whenever he does heal, he gets even stronger.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Surrenders when Sydney points out it's either that or Maxima frying his head.
- Lightning Bruiser: One with a shockingly fast recovery time, at that.
- Logical Weakness:
- Besides the fact that he needs violence to fuel his powers, and thus isn't much of a threat if no-one is fighting within his range and he doesn't have any power stored up, it's possible to hit him hard enough that the benefits he gets from the violence are outweighed by the damage done.
- Also, losing his urge towards violence saps his power, whether it's Dabbler's hypno-boobs in action, or being stoned and relaxed. The latter is how he's kept contained — constant marijuana smoke and Kirby games.
- Magic Pants: Vehemence averts and then invokes this trope in a literally magical form when he has absorbed a very large amount of "vehemic energy". He uses it to grow to twice his normal size — with all-too-realistic consequences for his clothes. However, he then flaunts just how much power he has acquired by using some of it to create himself a new pair of pants, complete with accompanying Ka-pants.
- Manipulative Bastard: Orchestrated the whole superbrawl, roping in all of the supers he knew who could possibly be partial to it (and some who normally wouldn't be, it seems...) and banked on ArcSWAT to react the way they did to fuel up his powers from all the violence.
- More than Mind Control: His control over vehemic energy extends to instilling and exacerbating violent tendencies in others; when powered up, he used his vehemic aura to wake up almost every knocked out super and make them fight each other indiscriminately, and post-battle conversations with some of the attacking supers strongly suggest that he used his aura to ramp up their aggression to the point where they thought the brawl was a good idea, which they likely never would have thought otherwise.
- Motive Rant: Subverted. At one point, he claims he'll start wars all over the world to fuel his powers, but...Vehemence: Actually Colonel, I'm not planning on doing any of that. It's just the sort of thing a guy like me is supposed to say. The world could use a good kick in the ass don't get me wrong, but war is unruly. I enjoy a good scrap is all. Think I'll take in a sports riot next. Brazil perhaps.
- Mysterious Stranger: His initial style, standing off to the side watching as the members of the villain team battle with the members of Arc-SWAT, and then having a polite conversation with Sydney. Also, Maxima refuses to believe his first explanation for his actions.
- Mysterious Watcher: Although the other villains are willing to regard him as one of their own, he just watches while they fight. Sydney is rightly concerned by this mystery.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Towards the climax of his fight against the team; justified in that by that point he's absorbed so much vehemic energy that he can use it in almost any way he sees fit.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: Just for a start, Vekter hits him with a car which explodes on impact, and the only damage we see is his suit sleeve being slightly ripped. He becomes even more resilient as the fight continues.
- Original Position Fallacy: He complains that Maxima is taking all the fun out of violence by hitting him with high damage, low violence moves like a swift kick to the knee. The Rant makes it clear the sentiment is: Fights are fun when you're winning.
- Pet the Dog: He seems to have a certain fondness for Sydney; she's the one he's referring to in his character pic above.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Vehemence says that he has gained more energy from his fight with Arc-SWAT than he got from the L.A. Race Riots. That said, he doesn't say whether he took part.
- Power Glows: The more vehemic energy he absorbs, the stronger he gets and the more his tattoos glow.
- Power Tattoo: Seems to be the case, as his tattoos are blue-lavender at the beginning of a fight, then start to glow green, then glow orange after Maxima blows his arm off.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Twofold. First, he never attempts to kill anyone but Maxima, because he knows that people can't be violent if they're dead, and he doesn't want to cut off his power supply. Second, he only attempts to kill Maxima because he believes that she's the only one who stands a chance of stopping him.
- When they start using him as a sparring partner he's perfectly willing to go along with it. He's ultimately a simple man with simple goals, who enjoys a good fight and needs the energy of violence to sustain himself. So being used as a training dummy on a regular basis by Archon satisfies him both spiritually and physically.
- Required Secondary Powers: While he isn't full-on immune to pain, he does have a tolerance that, as he puts it, "generally impresses all the ladies", since a normal level of pain aversion would make his power difficult to actually use.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Wears a sharp, dark suit and a nice hat, and his powers apparently serve to protect these from damage to some extent. However, he takes off first the hat and then his jacket when preparing to fight the heroes.
- The Stoner: Not by his own choice mind you. While imprisoned by ARCHON, they keep him perpetually high as balls and entertained with video games to keep him under control.
- Superpower Lottery: As Sydney lampshades, his powerset is no joke.
- Super-Strength: He manifests other powers in due course (and he's certainly quick and tough from the start), and he's quite a smart fighter in his way, but he's definitely very, very strong, and his physique makes him look the part.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Sort of. He's finally defeated by every super in the fight dogpiling him and holding his head under water. But while he has to spend energy faster than he gains it to keep from drowning, it would still take a while to finally, officially defeat him. So Sydney points out that he can either give up gracefully, or get his head vaporized by Maxima, and he submits to Dabbler's sleep spell.
- Underestimating Badassery: He quickly dismisses Sydney as a factor, writing her off as clever but too weak to either pose a threat or serve as a source of vehemic energy. Even when she manages to seal off his aura while standing unprotected within reach he doesn't bother to try to take her down. What's worse, he even recognizes and commends her on her savviness and smarts, so he has no excuse when she sets up a plan to defeat him.
Sciona
Sciona Arjin
An alari (alien) artificer and blood mage whose true plans remain unknown for some time. Though she first appears to be attempting to expose the supernatural world, that proves to be a distraction to allow her to steal a relic to return her to her original form, which was in turn just another step in a larger plan.
- A-Cup Angst: Perhaps not outright angst, but when she restores her original body she takes the opportunity to bump her bra size up a few notches.
- Arc Villain: Of the second storyline.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Sciona can replicate a variety of superpowers using her Blood Magic, including Boring Yet Practical powers like super-strength and speed, but also decides to give herself Eye Beams to fight against Maxima. Unfortunately, this has the downside of making it almost impossible to see, so she doesn't even realize Maxima charged her from her blind spot until it's too late.
- Bad Boss: Sciona, being a Blood Mage, tends to see people around her as resources more than people, leading to several cases of this.
- She drains the blood of her vampire underling in order to fuel her constructs.
- And then there's what she did to Cooter.Cthillia: "Here drink this, Cooter, it'll give you super strength." You're such a dick, Sciona.
- She then trumps all of that when she uses Wyrmil as a way to get past a force field that only allows living matter to get through, but kills any living matter that does pass through it. As in forcing him into the field and holding him in place while she punches a hole through his body to bypass the field.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Averted, it seems that way, but word of god confirms that it was just a lighting and angle thing.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Her sclera are pitch black.
- Blood Magic: She's skilled enough that she topped the Council's suspect list for creating the Mannekillers, even when presumed dead. She also has a tendency to use vampire blood for her creations in order to give them an extra kick.
- Body Horror: Her head was cut in half at the jaw, leaving her without a lower jaw or anything below the neck. The top half of her head was then attached to a troll who was maimed in the same way in order to make room for her.
- Breast Expansion: Boosts her cup size at least 2 notches when restoring her original body.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: She certainly seems to think so. Upon restoring her original body, she takes advantage of the artifact she's using and bumps herself up a few bra sizes. Later, when she obtains a new body, the very first thing she does is comment on how pleased she is that her new body already has "nice tits" right off the bat.
- The Caper: She planned and executed one for the Black Reliquary.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Betrays her team left and right during their heist on the Council's vault. This bites her in the butt when Archon comes a-calling and she has no backup.
- Combat Pragmatist: When Vale gets distracted, Sciona wastes no time in impaling her. Not that it does much.
- Creepy Blue Eyes: The iris and pupil of her eyes are solid blue, while the sclera are solid black - this is later shown to be a racial trait.
- Cry for the Devil: She gets a couple after (almost) completing her ritual.
- First, she discovers that she may be the Last of Her Kind, despite having talked to her homeworld just days ago.
- Then, after realizing that the populace had managed to encase their souls in a storage unit to escape the devastation, she utters this line after draining a lot of her own blood.Sciona: We'll be invading Earth after all, but now as refugees. Guess we can still take it over though. Eventually.
- First
- Evil Is Petty: Word of God is that he wanted a change from archvillains constantly monologuing and scheming, so she has a petty streak.
- The instant she gets her MacGuffin from the Council's vault, she sets off a lethal (if slow-acting) countermeasure and leaves her allies to collect their own under a time limit. Deus admits that given his knowledge of her personality and past actions, he should have seen that coming. Also, he'd been antagonizing her the entire time, so she might have done it out of spite rather than pre-planning. Her coming to his office because she forgot something pretty much confirms this.
- When Deus asks that she and Vale go outside if they are going to fight as he has just had the marble detailed, her response is to smash said marble.
- The instant
- Genius Bruiser: She works primarily through magic, but she's since taken over the body of a much larger and stronger creature. Though as it turns out, her original body was no slouch in terms of raw power either.
- Hard Light: How the wings of her original body seem to work, allowing her to crush or stab things with them.
- Healing Factor: Sydney uses her orbs to attack her, but a broken bone only annoys her due to her having troll blood.
- How Do I Shot Web?: After her Super-Empowering she tries to use those powers in a fight against Arc-Swat, and ends up getting her ass kicked because she doesn't know how to effectively use them.
- Idiot Ball: When Deus shows up in the middle of her heist, she gets pissed enough that she forgets to grab an artifact she needs for her main plan.
- The Minion Master: Creating golems is a specialty of hers.
- Not Quite Dead: She was assumed dead after having most of her head cut off. While not in the best condition, she still survived.
- Off with His Head!: Well, half of it anyways.
- Oh, Crap!: Has this reaction when she realises Vale is not a super.
- She has a much more subdued one when seeing what remains of her civilization.
- One-Winged Angel: Of a sort. When she uses the Epimorph she achieves a more powerful form, but it's just her original form before she got her head cut in half.
- Our Angels Are Different: Dabbler mentions that Sciona's race, the Alari, have commonly been mistaken for angels.
- Pointy Ears: An Alari trait.
- Sinister Scythe: She retrieves the Brane Ripper from Wyrmil and Cooter, a sickle that can tear open a rift to another world. Rather than use it on its own she combines it with tech to create the Skybreaker.
- Super-Empowering: Injects herself with what appears to be the blood of various Supers to give herself superpowers.
- Undeathly Pallor: Her skin is stark white, an Alari trait.
- The Unmasqued World: She threatens this when she sends minions to destroy the devices maintaining the Weirdness Censor. As it turns out, that was never her goal but just part of a larger plan.
- Villain Teleportation: She can use a ritual involving a lot of blood to open portals. In her original body, she seems to be able to teleport at will.
- Winged Humanoid: Her restored body has blue energy wings.
Superpowered
Atomic Bombshell
Atomic Bombshell
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what she did was of her own volition, though she's pretty enthusiastic about trying to kill Maxima.
- Buffy Speak: She calls her biggest attack "Explodey Bolo".
- Stuff Blowing Up: Her power lets her create and launch energy congelations that explode with varying degrees of force.
Boilerplate
Boilerplate
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what he did was of his own volition.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: After it is revealed that he was prodded on by Vehemence's power, they bring up the fact that he had 17 outstanding parking tickets to justify holding him for a bit. Judging by what he says during questioning, he isn't a felon or at least never got caught committing a felony.
- Super-Strength: Enough to go toe to toe with Hiro.
Breakpoint
Breakpoint
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what she did was of her own volition.
- Combat Pragmatist: Her primary tactic is to incapacitate someone with a continuous sonic attack and then toss something heavy into its path, which hurls it towards her now-helpless foe at incredible speed.
- Make Some Noise: She can project powerful sonic blasts.
- Super-Strength: She has enhanced strength, enough to toss around chunks of concrete with ease.
Concretia
"Concretia"
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what she did was of her own volition.
- When she returns, she's working with the group employing Hench Wench, but she reveals to Sydney that they have her body captive. Once Sydney and Cora free her body, she turns against Hench Wench and the other villains pretty quickly.
- Astral Projection: Her energy form is a projection from her real body, and she's been Forced into Evil by a group of villains holding it captive.
- Boring, but Practical: As she explains to a captive Sydney, she can use other stone materials for her body, but concrete is everywhere, so it's more practical to use in most situations. It doesn't help that harder substances are logically harder to manipulate.Sydney: You'd look pretty cool in quartz.
Concretia: I look fabulous in quartz. - Dishing Out Dirt: When she returns, besides being able to walk and talk in her concrete form, she's practiced with her powers enough that she can manipulate other concrete and stone materials. Presumably this is where Hench Wench gets it from.
- Everyone Has Standards: Although she admits to (understandably) wanting brutal revenge on the man who captured her body and forced her to work for him, even she asks Cora what is wrong with her after she reduces the guy to Ludicrous Gibs all over Sydney.
- Fatal Flaw: As she mentions below, hubris is something akin to this for her. Though it may have been Vehemence's aura of influence that clouded her judgment.
- She assumed that her real body would be safe while she was in stone form, only for a group of villains to capture it.
- Forced into Evil: She reveals to Sydney that the reason she's working with the current group she's in is because they have her physical body captive.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Her second appearance makes it clear that there are multiple aspects of her powers that she is simply unaware of. Most of this is suggested to stem from a lack of creativity on her part. Hench Wench, who is far more intelligent and creative than Concretia, is shown to be dramatically more effective with her powers than Concretia herself in spite of being in possession of them for a far shorter period of time.
- Intangibility: In her energy form.
- Irony: Despite her dismissal of normal humans, she gets incapacitated three times by ordinary humans in the fight. Once by Math, once when Peggy snipes her, and once when she finds the claymore Peggy set up to guard her position.
- This continues in her second appearance, where she incapacitates Halo's orbs... only to have Halo blow her head off with her sidearm.
- This continues in her second appearance
- Logical Weakness: She can use any type of stone for her construct body, but harder materials are harder to manipulate, while softer ones are less durable. There's also the issue of rarity; since hard materials like moissanite generally aren't found in large quantities like concrete is. She's also noticeably slower than a normal human, especially when in a harder material, because she's lugging much more weight around.
- Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: When she has Sydney captured, she mentions that since she hasn't been able to return to her body in a while, she hasn't been able to do certain things that require a biological form. Such as eat... or masturbate.
- Mighty Glacier: Her stone form is strong and tough, but slower than a normal human, especially when she gets into using harder materials. Even her concrete form's movement is best described as "lumbering".
- Not Quite Flight: Her energy form can float, though Word of God is that it's ambiguous on whether or not she can actually fly with it.
- Power Perversion Potential: Halo suggests that, since the shape of her concrete body is purely up to her, she could potentially create a male body with a polished stone penis.
- Pragmatic Villainy: She and the other goon object to the masked villain trying to shoot Halo, since it is such a momentously stupid idea.
- The Bus Came Back: Returned in the alien tourist arc.
- Shock Collar: Her real body has one on it, and whenever she disobeys, her "bosses" can use it on her, which she can feel even as concrete.
- Smug Super: She's dismissive of non-supers in the battle. This turns out poorly for her.
- Taken for Granite: She can form an extremely durable body out of stone materials. If it gets too damaged, she emerges from it in an energy form and can create a new one.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Her stone form is strong and tough, but not only is it too slow and heavy for anything more than basic punching and grappling, she never learned how to really fight. When she fights Hench Wench while both are in astral form, she loses the hold she had on Hench Wench and gets put into a headlock. Justified, as Supers are rare enough that she only knew normal humans for most of her life, and thus her brute force was enough for whatever she needed.
For Whom the Death Tolls
For Whom the Death Tolls ("Death Toll")
- Adaptive Ability: His power, in a nutshell, is the ability to adapt to deal with the powers of whoever he's currently facing off against. There are three downsides - one is that he has to be able to see what he's dealing with. Two is that he can't adapt to a power that isn't being used in direct offense to him. Three is that there's a limit to how many adaptations he can have at once; he's vulnerable to a massive team-up.
- Atrocious Alias: The absurdity of his villain name has been noted by the heroes and his fellow villains. He seems to be the only one who thinks it's cool. But of course, it's really provocative.Anvil: What.
Death Toll: For Whom the... it's a phrasic...
Anvil: I'm going to arrest you just for that. That is the worst name ever.
Death Toll: It is not! - Attack Backfire: Any time someone attacks him in melee range, his powers allow him to counter them with grim precision.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Yes, he has a really sucky name, but over three strips he takes on several of the team's heavy-hitters with no problem. If not for Sydney figuring out his actual power set, not even Maxima could have stopped him.Vekter: Yes! That guy may be the worst at names but it looks like he's going to wipe the floor with their whole team!
- Combo Platter Powers: Death Toll initially appears to have a wide array of powers capable of dealing with everyone he fights. However, Sydney is able to figure out that his power is actually to gain the power to counter whoever is attacking him, frequently with enough force to put the attacker out of the fight.
- Crippling Overspecialization: His power gives him whatever power he needs to counter an attack. The power granted is usually strong enough to take out his opponent, but while that power manifests he can't gain another.
- Energy Absorption:
- A common manifestation of his power; he soaks up incoming damage and then turns it back on the attackers in one form or another.
- He absorbs the kinetic energy from Anvil's blow, and all the energy she had stored up, rendering her unconscious.
- When Jiggawatt attacks him by turning into lightning and hurling herself at him, he briefly traps her between his hands, and then shoots her out at Stalwart.
- Expy: of Taskmaster. He has the skull mask and hooded cape. He even has a similar power. Taskmaster can instantly copy another character's skills fighting style and Death Toll can instantly empower himself with the perfect counter power for any individual.
- The Gadfly/You Fight Like a Cow: His grandiloquent, obnoxious manner, goading and insulting his opponents at every opportunity, and his extra-flashy costume may simply be designed to provoke opponents into attacking him as much as possible, so they don't realize that he can't do anything unless they do. If so, he arguably manages to overdo it.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: He gets a lot out of his powers despite the very specific circumstances required to make them work. Then the team realise what's up with them, and suddenly they plunge headlong into What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?.
- In the Hood: He wears a cowl (admittedly not in black), along with a somewhat Pimped-Out Cape, purely so he can "look imperious". In other words, he lives and more or less lampshades the trope.
- Logical Weakness:
- His power doesn't manifest unless he's attacked, so not attacking him essentially renders him powerless.
- By its nature, it gives him any power he needs. The key here is that "any" means a single power specifically to counter the attack. Avert Mook Chivalry and hit him with enough varied attacks that any single power can't counter them all and he goes down.
- Mook Chivalry: Relies heavily on this, goading the heroes into attacking him one by one since there turns out to be a limit to how much he can counter at once. He goes down when multiple heroes hit him together.
- Skeletons in the Coat Closet: He wears a skull mask.
Gauntlette
Gauntlette
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what she did was of her own volition.
- Power Fist: Her power.
Glowbug
Glowbug
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what she did was of her own volition.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: One of her powers is being able to glow. If she cranks it up, it serves as a fairly effective flashbang.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- She fires off an electrical blast while standing in a stream of water.
- There's also the matter of wearing an all-white outfit to a superhero fight. When she gets wet, it becomes see-through.
- Psycho Electro: She takes a little too much pleasure in electrocuting people.
- Shock and Awe: Her main offensive power is to shoot lightning from her hand. She seems to be lacking the usual Required Secondary Power, however, as she's not entirely immune to electricity (including her own).
Goon Squad
Aka "Ted." A duplicator who works for the Ascenders.
- Bloodless Carnage: His duplicates disintegrate into what look like butterscotch candies when killed.
- Cannon Fodder: Is rather blasé about the expendability of his duplicates, even volunteering for target practice when ARCHON captures several of him. Furthermore, The Rant reveals that each 8-10 duplicates causes them all to lose an IQ point, so higher numbers mean more incompetent mooks.
- Faceless Mooks: All of his duplicates thus far have worn featureless helmets and body armor. Which makes it a bit easier to impersonate him.
- Self-Duplication: His power, and he doesn't seem to have Harem's limits, fielding dozens of himself at a time. Each duplicate has its own mind to the point they can argue with each other and The Rant confirms that the copies get dumber at higher numbers, though the rate at which this happens is slow. The Rant notes his duplication is technically limitless, but he would eventually become too stupid to continue duplicating.
Heavenly Sword
Heavenly Sword
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what she did was of her own volition. A later page confirms that she's associated with Deus, but it's hard to say what that implies considering his status.
- BFS/Laser Blade: Her power revolves around energy "blades" which her superpower enables her to create around any long, thin object which she holds in her hand.
- Cleavage Window: Halo warns her that she'll be tagged as "Keyhole" if she doesn't introduce herself properly during her first appearance (even though it's a fight scene).
- Explaining Your Powers to the Enemy: Sydney gets her to explain her Sword Beam power by invoking "Silver Age rules".
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: The author comments here that she has a lot of potential for a seemingly limited power.
- Implausible Fencing Powers: Trounces Dabbler in a sword fight and easily deflects her magical attacks while doing so. Word of God puts her at a four on the power scale.
- Logical Weakness: Needs a weapon to channel energy around, and Peggy very nearly takes her out of the fight altogether by shattering her wooden sword with a sniper bullet. If she hadn't picked up another fallen villain's ribbon whip, she'd have been done for.
- Sword Beam: At least a borderline case; the energy fields she can create around her blade may not give her a true ranged attack, but they give her significantly more reach than a mundane sword.
- Whip Sword: Capable of making one by using her powers to generate blades around a ribbon whip.
Hench Wench
Hench Wench
A super that has all the powers of the supervillains that employ her.- Ability Mixing: Notes that she's been able to combine powers in strange ways, like finding a way to merge her Astral Projection from Concretia with her physical body.
- All Your Powers Combined: Has all the powers of the villains that employ her, making her one of the most powerful supers seen so far with the breadth of her abilities.
- Crazy-Prepared: As someone whose superpowers are entirely dependent on being able to stay employed by those she draws power from, she made sure that her employment contract was really hard to terminate even if she backstabbed them. First by ensuring that only the majority of the board could fire her, and even then only if it got ratified by the manager of the LLC AKA Hench Wench herself. She also subcontracts to a villain friend with portal powers so she can make a Villain: Exit, Stage Left if needed.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Using her geokinesis powers to rip out a huge column of dirt and concrete from the middle of a New York City street also rips out the pipes and power lines that ran through it. She inadvertently causes a six-square-block blackout.Hench Wench: Whoops! Thaaat's gonna cost!
- She admits after the fact that opening a portal from the bottom of the bay directly into her apartment was a bad idea.
- Having the villains hiring her form an LLC and entering a contract with that LLC was a brilliant way to gain all their powers and make it very difficult for them to fire her if they no longer desired her services. However, she seemed to fail to account for how that would open her up to a legal attack - suspending or dissolving her LLC terminates the contract, and any LLC engaging in supervillainy, much less founded to engage in such, can relatively easily be suspended on legal and/or ethical grounds. That said, she did separately contract a portal power in case things went south with the LLC.
- Using her geokinesis powers to rip out a huge column of dirt and concrete from the middle of a New York City street
- Dishing Out Dirt: Has geokinesis from Concretia. She even figures out how to animate a golem body and move her physical one at the same time before Concretia herself realized that it was possible.
- Drunk with Power: She clearly goes a bit power-mad during her introductory fight, even deliberately ignoring orders from her "boss" to stand down.
- Evil, Inc.: The reason she's so powerful is that she had the villains who hired her incorporate into an LLC so she'd get all their powers.
- Exact Words: The conditions of her hiring in her contract mean Brüt cannot simply fire her for going power mad and endangering him, despite him being her "boss." She can only be fired by a majority of board members of the LLC. She apparently snuck this in with legalese without any of the "board members" noticing. Furthermore, even with a majority vote from the board, she still can't be fired without the approval of the manager, who is Hench Wench herself, making her all but impossible to really fire.
- Similarly, her power explicitly only works for supervillains, not heroes.
- Foreshadowing: Her ability to manipulate the concrete of the city foreshadows that Concretia's around (and a member of the LLC).
- Imagine Spot: Which Maxima somehow managed to clue into. She sees herself and Vehemence in a common area while in prison, and she offers him her "services" to get him a carton of milk and then "the largest riot ever in history."
- Instant Expert: Downplayed. She has Concretia's powers and is shown to be able to use them far more effectively than Concretia can, but this is suggested to be more due to a lack of creativity on Concretia's part.
- Overly Narrow Superlative: As noted in The Rant of this page, her powers work exclusively with Supervillains - if they could work with Heroes, she'd likely be called "Sidekick Wench" instead.
- Personality Powers: It's probably not a coincidence that the super with contract-based abilities is a paralegal in her day job.
- Semantic Superpower: Best way to sum up the abstract power description that is "has all the powers of supers that employ me", with limits further defined by the legally drafted terms of that employment. It also only works for villains specifically, not supers in general.
- Smug Snake: She always sees herself as the smartest and most badass person around, completely infallible. This makes it so, so gratifying, in-universe, when she's proven wrong.Arianna: So god damned satisfying. (Lights a cigar.)
- Strong and Skilled: Unlike Concretia, she actually learned how to fight outside of using powers, no doubt due in part to how much her powerset likely tends to change between fights, and has some skill with Ability Mixing. When the two fight in astral form, she is easily beating Concretia.
- Thinking Up Portals: Is contracted with a friend who has this power, and tries to use it to escape, only to be foiled by Maxima. And proceeds to escape anyway by portaling to the bottom of a nearby river and fleeing to her own apartment while Maxima is disoriented.
- Uneven Hybrid: Apparently her contract-based abilities are due to her being 1/8th devil.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Attempted, deconstructed, and subverted. As she's being arrested by Arc Swat, she boasts that she's sub-contracted to a friend with portals and attempts to jump through one, right in front of Maxima. To no one's shock but her own, Maxima grabs her by the neck before she gets into the portal, and when the portal closes, she's still in custody.Maxima: "I have super-speed, moron."
- She does manage to get away in the end portaling the both of them underwater and escaping while Maxima is momentarily disoriented. Making the trope reconstructed and double subverted when she comes out the other end of the portal in her now flooded apartment.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Subverted. Brüt tries to fire her to strip her of her powers, but she specifically worded the contract so a majority of the "board" has to fire her, and then her firing needs to be approved by the manager. Brüt didn't even know if they'd made a board, so she's nigh impossible to fire unless someone really good at contract law or at least loopholes shows up. She's defeated when Arianna out-legals her by suspending her contract on ethical grounds until such a time it can be reviewed by the New York secretary of state.
Hex
Hex
- Absurd Phobia: Squirrels.
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what she did was of her own volition.
- Beam Spam: With six orbs she can put out a good volume of firepower.
- Evil Counterpart: Sort of, to Sydney. She's just as capable of having an epic freakout and uses six floating magic helper objects. Maxima even calls her "Budget Halo" over the coms, which pisses her off.
- Flight: Another use for her orbs.
- Flying Firepower: The combination of the flight and laser-cutter from her orbs gives her this powerset.
- Force Field: She can create limited energy shields by projecting them between her orbs, with the orbs serving as the corners. This limits the flexibility of the shapes she can create but they are still fairly durable.
- Glass Cannon: Her lasers hit hard but she's just as squishy as a normal human.
- Laser Cutter: The beams made by her orbs can easily shear through entire buildings.
- Not So Harmless: While she accomplishes little in the overall fight, a panic attack over a squirrel leads to her lasers demolishing what's left of the restaurant.
- Tradesnark™: Hex's "Buster Buddies" are always appended to a "™" inside her speech bubbles, and also in her summary outside the comic.
Jabberwokky
See her entry on the Archon subpage.
Lee Press On Claws
"Lee Press On Claws"
- Absurdly Sharp Claws: Supposedly they can cut through anything.
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what he did was of his own volition.
- Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Challenges Math when the latter demands a competent opponent.
- Expy: With the claws and the indestructibility, he's pretty clearly a parody of Wolverine.
- First Injury Reaction: Faints when Sydney proves his claws can cut his skin.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Claims that his skin is impenetrable.
- No Name Given: Goes down before he can name himself, so all he gets is a stupid appellation by Leon.
- Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: After hearing that his claws can cut anything and his skin is impenetrable, Sydney smacks his own claws into him to see which is false. Turns out it's his skin that doesn't live up to the hype.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Faints at the sight of his own blood.
Mach the Knife
"Mach the Knife"
- Ambiguously Evil: Due to Vehemence's aggro aura it's hard to say how much of what he did was of his own volition, but he's definitely quite ruthless in combat.
- Casanova Wannabe: We don't know how successful he is with women (he is very handsome), but after he is sedated, he mumbles that he isn't fast in bed (a common fan joke about superspeedsters) in his confusion. Given the circumstances, he wasn't going to get any.
- Expy: Clearly named after Mack the Knife which becomes more obvious when he is wrapped up like his mummy counterpart during the fight. He also escapes said bandages using high speed vibration powers like The Flash.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: It is stated that he'll probably work through the sedative given to him before the fight is over, so they use another device to keep him out of the fight. This might also explain why he fell unconscious so quickly from the Hollywood tranquilizer.
- Scars Are Forever: Leaves Heat Wave with a missing toe by the end of the fight.
- Super-Speed: His power. He's fast enough to react to and cut Harem teleporting in behind him before she can teleport back out.
Darude
Darude ("The Arab")
- The Ace: He's one of only three people to ever fight Maxima to a standstill.
- Bilingual Bonus: For a long period, his only line in the comic was in Arabic. A direct translation is "I am the dead one. I am much better now". Word of God is that it was supposed to say "Dead am I? So much the better."
- No Name Given: For a long time after his first mention, he remained unnamed, and so was given the uncreative moniker "The Arab" by some readers. Maxima calls him "Darude" in chapter 1054, but even that is a nickname she had to make up, since he never said his real name.
- Not Quite Dead: Maxima claimed he was dead, though she had her own doubts. The exact method of his survival is as of yet unknown.
- Sand Blaster: His powers allow him to create sandstorms, though whether he becomes part of it or simply manipulates the sand is unkown.
- The Bus Came Back: 867 chapters after his first appearance, he makes a sweeping return, targeting Machina Industries, or perhaps Maxima?
Scorpia
Scorpia
A dead criminal whose body Sciona takes over. It's implied that she's part of some kind of drug cartel. She has the power to secrete some kind of substance through her hands that induces feelings of intense euphoria.- Defiant to the End: Even as she's getting the crap beaten out of her, she keeps mocking her captors.
- Healing Hands: Well... Not so much healing as euphoria-inducing.
- Most Common Superpower: Sciona immediately notes that her body has "nice tits" after she possesses her, and she's later revealed to be a Super.
- Personality Powers: Heavily implied to be a member of a drug cartel, and she has the power to induce intense feelings of euphoria by touching someone, seemingly by secreting a liquid through the palms of her hands.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: In the extreme. She gets killed off in the same page she's introduced in.
Aranea
Aranea
A six-armed demonhunting vigilante who kidnaps Tamatha and attempts to interrogate her to learn more about the Twilight Council.- All There in the Manual: Her name has not been revealed in-story yet, but page tags and descriptions reveal that it's Aranea.
- Animal Motifs: Spiders, obviously
- Fantastic Racism: She believes demons are inherently evil. Dabbler implies that while not all demons are evil, they do lean towards it.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She has six arms.
- Obliviously Evil: She seems to think that demons and those who ally themselves with demons are Always Chaotic Evil and she acts accordingly. Unfortunately for her, she is totally wrong.
- Super-Strength: While not the strongest being in the series, she is definitely stronger than a normal human being.
- This Cannot Be!: When she fights Sydney and Sydney's wig comes off, revealing her identity, she's stunned at the implication that ARCHON is in league with "the Darkness."
- Would Hurt a Child: Seems perfectly willing to kidnap and interrogate Tamatha, a barely-adolescent succubus.
Supernatural
Mannekillers
"Mannekillers"
Supernaturally animated mannequins sent to kill the Twilight Council and destroy the Sigils..
- Action Bomb: They're equipped with mana voids, allowing them to drain magical energy from anything that tries to use magic on them, even non-aggressively, and repurpose it into a massive explosion. The yield is apparently enough to breach Maxima's shield.
- All Your Powers Combined: The composite mannekiller has all the weapons of its component beings.
- Antimagic: One of their weapons is a blade that counters magic.
- Bloody Handprint: Each has one on their face made from vampire blood. Besides looking scary, they serve the practical purpose of providing the blood required to animate them.
- Blood Magic: Each contains a fragment of a blooddrinker sword that serves as their brain and power source.
- The Brute: One of them is noticeably larger than the others and has a knight's helmet for a head.
- Detachment Combat: Their limbs can function independently.
- Golem: Whatever superficial differences there may be, they're considered to be golems.
- Immune to Bullets: They take minor damage but it doesn't affect them what with their lack of vital organs, pain receptors, or other meaty bits.
- Mage Killer: Not just mages, but several other kinds of supernatural beings as well.
- Muggles Do It Better: Their opening attack was a grenade packed with silver buckshot, iron, and white phosphorus.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The composite mannekiller.
- No-Sell: Bullets don't do anything more than cosmetic damage.
- One-Winged Angel: With enough blood to fuel the sword fragments, the largest mannekiller can incorporate the parts of the others into a single composite entity.
- Poisoned Weapons: Retractable claws with paralyzing neurotoxin.
- Pulling Themselves Together: Allowing them to negate most damage.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Icon rules them nonsapient, permitting lethal force.
- Wolverine Claws: One of their many weapons.
- Your Head Asplode: How Maxima kills the composite mannekiller.
Cthillia
Cthillia
A unique supernatural being with various gaze-based powers. She does work for Deus on occasion, but she has her own plans.
- Chekhov's Gunbeing: First seen in strip #389 and finally plot-relevant in #530.
- Deadly Gaze: Appears to induce heart attacks through eye contact. Given her power-set and her comments about being extremely ugly, and scaled skin, it's entirely possible she is a gorgon.
- Is eventually revealed to be a type of humanoid beholder with at least six eye stalks on her head, with each eye having a different color and power.
- Is eventually revealed to be a type of humanoid beholder
- Deadpan Snarker: Makes the very good point that immortality is not something a wise being makes assumptions about.
- Eye Beams: She can shoot some sort of kinetic blast from her eyes.
- Femme Fatalons: Whatever she is has claws instead of fingernails.
- Hellish Pupils: Has golden eyes with slit pupils.
- Lizard Folk: Her hands, currently the only part of her body shown besides her eyes, are distinctly scaly.
- Samus Is a Girl: Between the obscuring clothing and the text used for her speech, there's no immediate indications that she's female.
- Single Specimen Species: Sciona notes that there are no others like Cthillia around and implies that she is so unique she could be immortal for all they know.
- Spikes of Villainy: She has spikes protruding from her shoulders and works with the distinctly villainous Sciona.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Is not really surprised by Deus showing up in the vault she and Sciona were robbing, despite not having told him about the op.
Zvonamir
Zvonamir
A vampire first seen in the gallery of the Council, but subsequently revealed to be a servant of Sciona.
- The Mole: Within the council, for Sciona.
- Monster Progenitor: He's spawned many vampires, though most of those were to supply Sciona with a continuous source of vampire blood.
- One to Million to One: He can transform into a swarm of bats.
- Really 700 Years Old: He's quite old, enough that his blood is significantly more powerful than anything else Sciona can get her hands on.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Sciona leaves him behind in the Black Reliquary, but apparently he's vanished by the time anyone reacts to the intrusion.
The Super Husk
The Super Husk
- An Arm and a Leg: Within the first few seconds of its attack Pixel cuts off its right arm. It grows it back after assimilating her powers.
- The Assimilator: It can gain the powers of supers from their blood.
- Blood Magic: It's at least partially powered by Zvonamir's blood, as well as that from two other unknown beings.
- Carry a Big Stick: Its right arm ends in a mace.
- Combat Tentacles: Its left arm is a large tentacle.
- Deflector Shields: It can project a defensive shield that deflects incoming projectiles. Unlike most uses of this trope, it also shows the deflected shots wrecking the surrounding area.
- Fashionable Asymmetry: Its face has two eyes on one side and one on the other as well as a horn on only one side, while the arms are completely different.
- Healing Factor: Due to the whole "blood magic" thing the tentacles that make up its interior body can grow to replace missing body parts.
- Hypnotic Eyes: Due to the vampire blood used to make it.
- It Can Think: It's more intelligent than the mannekillers, capable of using tactics and smart enough to talk. Amusingly, the first time it demonstrates the latter trait is objecting to Sydney calling it dumb.
- Laser Blade: After assimilating Pixel's powers it gains laser spikes on its mace hand.
- Not Quite Dead: Its control cortex is capable of separating from and operating independently of its body. It makes use of this ability to escape when Hiro supposedly kills it, leaving the main body behind as a decoy.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Hiro rips a chunk of crystal out of its chest, presumably a power source, which then explodes with enough force to breach Maxima's shield.
- The Worm That Walks: It's essentially a mass of tentacles contained in portions of armor.
Gunhildr
Gunhildr
- Action Girl: She's had years of experience in battle and isn't afraid to get a few more.
- Awesome McCoolname: "Gunn" means "war" and "Hildr" means "battle", though together it means "battle maiden". Lampshaded by Sydney, who mentions that while it's a pretty cool name it's also a reflection of the unfortunate times she was born into.
- Blood Knight: She could have avoided the entire Mannekiller fight without risk, but fighting seemed more fun.
- Cleavage Window: A relatively small diamond shaped one.
- The Mole: For Sciona on the Council and among the Semper Vigilantis.
- Really 700 Years Old: She's dresses like a Viking and is fluent in old Norse, so she's definitely been around for a while.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Part of her motivation to fighting the Mannekillers alongside ARCHON was to get some good publicity for vampires. Played straight when it's revealed she actually is a villain.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Sciona leaves her behind in the Black Reliquary, but apparently she's vanished by the time anyone reacts to the intrusion.
Wyrmil
Wyrmil
An extremely durable supernatural being in league with Sciona. He's also had some dealings with Deus in the past.- Adaptive Ability: He can grow gills to breath water, likely just a facet of his powers.
- Badass Bandolier: He wears one, though a corresponding weapon has yet to be seen.
- Bald of Evil: When seen through The Veil he appears bald.
- Combat Tentacles: He has tentacles in place of arms.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Sciona uses him as a means of bypassing a force field that allows only living matter through, while killing anything living that passes through it.
- Deliberate Injury Gambit: It's implied that he recovered the Regenator by grabbing it from the pedestal and ripping his own arm off before the death effect could spread to his body.
- Fusion Dance: Is forced to fuse with Coot to survive.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has a forking scar across the left side of his face.
- Informed Attribute: Sciona says he would survive a blast powerful enough to breach the Black Reliquary vault doors, wich implies some degree of invulnerability or healing factor. We never get to see an example before he gets pushed into an insta-death field.
- A later strip has Ingsol mention that he thought Wyrmil was nigh-impossible to kill, right before it's implied that he actually survived getting shoved into said field.
- Lamprey Mouth: He has teeth ringing his entire mouth, though unlike most examples they don't go all the way down the throat.
- Not So Stoic: He's generally reserved, but Cooter alternately amuses and annoys him.
- Not Quite Dead: When the Council Group arrives at the vault, Ingsol notes that he thought Wyrmil was nigh-impossible to kill. That, combined with his description as worm-like (worms can regenerate under some conditions) combined with a good chunk of his body being gone, Sydney noticing what seems to be a trail out of the vault, hints that he's still alive.
- A later strip reveals that he's fused with the also Not Quite Dead Cooter Jones.
- Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: He manages to recover and use the Regenator on his own while dying from the death field.
- Resurrective Immortality: Kind of. It's heavily implied that when he's critically wounded his "spine" can escape from his body and regrow the rest of him.
- Sinister Scythe: He recovers the sickle, known as the Brane Ripper, from the pedestal Sciona smashed. When used, it splits open a rift to a mass of monstrous tentacles. Ultimately he only gets to use it once before Sciona comes to retrieve it.
- Treasure Chest Cavity: He can store items inside of his body.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: He's not wearing a shirt, and there are exactly two panels that show he even wears pants.
Doctor Chuckles
Dr. Chuckles
A supernaturally skilled surgeon and the one responsible for putting Sciona back together.- Air Quotes: He uses quite a few behind Coot's back while describing the human.
- Creepy Blue Eyes: Combined with his mouth, it gives him a shark-like appearance.
- Light Is Not Good: He's an evil doctor with a mouthful of fangs who wears all white.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: He's a supernatural being with a doctorate who likes making Frankensteinian creations out of his allies.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: He never appears during the heist itself, making it unclear what happened to him after Sciona abandoned or betrayed everyone who actually was there.
Thothogoth
Thothogoth
- Ambiguously Evil: When he makes an appearance in the story proper, he seems less like an evil, demonic overlord and more like a jilted ex-boyfriend. He's barely even antagonistic towards the other members of the team and seems to still be carrying a torch for Dabbler. That said, he does at least talk about having demonic armies prepared to invade and conquer Earth.
- Can't Live Without You: Is this to Dabbler. Succubi are a Servant Race who literally can't live unless they're bonded to someone as a "master." If Thothogoth dies, Dabbler will start to bleed mana unless she finds someone new to be her master.
- Deal with the Devil: He attempts to invoke this, only to be shut down by Dabbler. She reminds him that neither of them are devils, so there isn't actually any kind of supernaturally binding pact between them.Dabbler: We have an arrangement and it's your career choices that have distanced us.
- Dragged Off to Hell: His fight with Dabbler ended in him being dragged into a fiery portal.
- Everything Is Racist: Played with.
- When Sydney asks if the public stereotype of demons like himself are agents of chaos and destruction is accurate, especially since he showed up on Earth marketing a new world order, he scoffed "that's racist" to which Dabbler retorts that Tom himself is planning to institute said order by conquest, which is inherently chaotic and destructive.
- When Sydney learns he's a Fiend, she reflexively points out that his marketing is going to be a hard sell and needs a lot of PR work, to which he accused her of intentionally being hurtful.
- When Sydney defends herself by stating that if she, a human, were to ride a wormhole to another world without humans and identify herself with a term synonymous with "baby killer", she'd have a hard time winning over hearts and minds, he loses it, until Dabbler spelled out that his people chose their race name when being brutal tyrants was their norm. Dave B. points out that Sydney's mistake was being too specific.
- Good Wings, Evil Wings: Bone wings variant. We have yet to learn if he's truly evil enough to deserve them. Conversation with Dabbler has established that he's both capble of shapeshifting magic and a drama queen.
- Heart Light: He has a chunk of glowing blue crystal in this position.
- Horns of Villainy: In demon tradition.
- Loophole Abuse: His actions when he burst into an Archon training area, following Vehemence's energy aura, made him a persona-non-grata in the US, so when he later shows up in Deus's country of Galytn, there's nothing Maxima can do to oust him, but that's okay, as he was actually an ally in defending the country from an armed invasion led by one of Maxima's Rogues Gallery.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Besides his main arms, he has several spider-like limbs on his back (possibly skeletal wings).
- Nerds Are Sexy: He certainly thinks so. He told Maxima and Sydney that Dabbler was a "pigeon-toed dork" when she was in high school and that she wore very thick glasses, and because her mind hadn't caught up to her soul, she was extremely innocent and would constantly be doing sexy and/or suggestive things without realizing it. He also tells them that he thought that she was "sexier than all the succubus cheerleaders combined."
- No Name Given: We didn't know his actual name until recently.
- Pet the Dog: Whatever his flaws or ultimate moral alignment, he's a kind, encouraging and patient "master" to Parfait.
- Tom the Dark Lord: Dabbler literally refers to him as "Tom" when she meets him again. Whether this is his actual name or a nickname she gave him is yet to be seen.
- Spikes of Villainy: On his arms and shoulders.
- Underestimating Badassery: To Maxima. He attempts to antagonize her after she butts into his conversation with Dabbler, and she responds by grabbing his finger and judo-flipping him onto his back hard enough to knock him out.
- We Will Meet Again: His final promise to Dabbler. Now that he's found her, a reunion seems imminent. In true Dabbler fashion, it's extremely orgasmic... and quite awkward for the others, who have to listen to their lovemaking echoing from the bottom of a canyon.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Points out that Sydney's behavior has been hurtful. First, she compared his head to a thumb in a helmet and her comment about demons being obsessed with chaos was a racist remark.
- Winged Humanoid: Has skeletal limbs on his back that might be the bone structure for batlike or draconic wings. Between his huge size and the fact that the wings have no membranes, he would probably still need magic to fly.
Mundane
Cooter
Cooter Jones
- Action Bomb: Gets turned into one without his knowledge by Sciona as part of a plan to breach the Black Reliquary's defenses.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Gets blasted by a vault's defenses, then has tendrils burst out of him and explodes.
- Deep South: He's basically a collection of redneck stereotypes.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: He tries this, but just ejects the unspent round.
- Enemy Mine: He's willing to ally with "monsters" in order to get his revenge, taking their word that they're self-loathing enough to commit suicide once it's over.
- Fantastic Racism: He loathes any supernatural being, referring to them as monsters.
- Fusion Dance: Wyrmil uses the Regenator to fuse himself with Cooter, as neither of them was intact enough for it to repair individually.
- Jerkass: In just two strips he proved himself misogynistic and racist.
- Karmic Transformation: Wyrmil is forced to use one of the artifacts in the vault to fuse with him to save himself, meaning that Coot isn't fully human anymore.
- Naked on Revival: Is nude when Sydney finds him after his apparent explosive death.
- Not Quite Dead: Somehow survived being exploded.
- Sharing a Body: With Wyrmil, though he's apparently the dominant one, and can barely hear the monster trying to communicate with him.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: He carries a shotgun.
- Sinister Scythe: As Cooter's the one in control of the body, he's the one wielding the sickle Wyrmil stole. Though not for long, as Sciona soon comes to retrieve it.
- Unwitting Pawn: Finds out too late that Sciona's group wasn't exactly being honest with him regarding its goals and methods. He gets blood-teleported into a vault full of artifacts of doom, so he'd take the first hit, turning him to Ludicrous Gibs in the process, and thus sabotage the internal defenses.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Is killed off fairly quickly after his debut. Except not.
The Ascenders
A Group of Villains
A group of sinister cowled people seeking information on Archon, consisting of both superpowered villains and superrich investors looking for a way to gain powers of their own.- Cruel and Unusual Death: One cowl gets hit with an Unwinder Round from Cora, which Sydney later likens to a large bag of spaghetti exploding over a 50-foot radius. It's compared to Cooter's death, which is certainly saying something.
- Jerkass: The cowl in control of Concretia. He holds Concretia's main body hostage to force her to work for her, electrifies and demeans her whenever she does something wrong, has her capture Halo, uses a Truth Serum to force the latter to give information on Archon before using a memory eraser to prevent her from remembering them, and when that doesn't work out like he planned, he tries to shoot her to see if they can get the spheres to bind to someone under their control. Thankfully, his subordinates and Concretia hold him back long enough for Cora, even if it resulted in Ludicrous Gibs.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Deconstructed. They capture an Archon agent and proceed to beat the shit out of him to try and force him to cough up the codes to unlock Archon's digital list of supers. Turns out the guy was Captured on Purpose and eats their captors, wears their uniforms, and then uses their own cellphones to call in the cavalry.
- No Name Given: None of them are given names at any point. The only distinguishing feature is their outfits, crimson cowled cloaks with black tuxedo coats and black domino masks.
- Playing with Syringes: In the most recent issues, it's revealed that they perform unstated medical experiments on super-powered enabled people that they capture.
- Pragmatic Villainy: When one cowl proves to be Stupid Evil and tries to shoot Sydney, both his subordinate and Concretia stop him, since killing a federal agent and celebrity will get them way more attention than they want.
- Slimeball: One cowl electrifies Concretia's main body whenever she does something wrong, and forces her to say "thank you for fixing me, daddy" whenever he does so. It's noted that he's more of a creep than Sciona.
Extraterrestial
Calamarians
Nice planet you got there, could use a bit of Fantastic Nuke.
The race that was found by Archon on the Alari home-world after Sciona's incomplete portal sucked Arc-swat members there. Not much is known about them. All that's certain is that they recognize Sydney's orbs and want to annihilate them, along with whoever wields them. They are presumably responsible for the genocide of the Alari.As a whole
- Attack Drones: Their spaceship has a seemingly endless supply of human-sized fighter planes.
- Cool Spaceship: Their long-range bombardment option is a spaceship that looks like a giant corkscrew, and presumably big enough to fit an entire city, with room to spare.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Each Calamarian has one and only one special ability. They rely on their sheer size to deal with anything and everything else they come across. Against Sydney, this is a bad idea.
- David vs. Goliath: Standard human versus beings the size of skyscrapers.
- The Dreaded: They're the first anything shown capable of compromising Halo's shield, and making Maxima order a full-on retreat.
- Fatal Flaw: Which Sydney exploits the hell out of. They have very, very limited close-range defenses. Bypass their shields, and they can be dispatched quickly. Their shields are also a dome, not a sphere like Sydney's. One of them proved this by slamming Halo deep into the ground and Halo blasting her way up and out.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: There is no explanation for why they are on the Alari home-world, but they are the prime suspects for the genocide of the Alari race.
- Giant Equals Invincible: Subverted. The first time Sydney is forced to fight them, her PPO beam wraps around the Calamarian she's fighting. She uses her telecom orb to teleport past its shield and carve it up like a sushi roll.
- Impossibly Graceful Giant: They can move their limbs at incredible speeds for Kaiju sized beings.
- No Name Given: Their official species and racial name is yet to be revealed in the comic proper. In Dave B's blog and the comments section, they've been affectionately dubbed "Calamarians" or "Squidwardians."
- Planet Looters: Cora refers to them as "Planet Wreckers".
- Rent-a-Zilla: They are the size of skyscrapers, they walk, and they are invariably hostile to Sydney, for no explained reason.
- Roar Before Beating: "RAOOOOOOOO!"
- Squishy Wizard: Ironically. For a race of Kaiju, they have truly impressive powers and abilities, but get past those and the race are just giant sushi waiting to happen.
The Fell
As a Whole
Give us our artifact, and your lives!
A race of hostile aliens that tracks Cora back to Earth, hoping to seize their artifact that Cora has in her cargo-hold.- Always Chaotic Evil: They’re a collective corrupted by stygian energy. Dabbler tells Maxima that the best, and only, option is to kill them fast and move on.
- The Assimilator: According to Cora, they are a race that serially forcefully recruits everyone they can, and kill everyone they can't.
- Implacable Man: Their ground troops come with energy shields that just about make them Immune to Bullets, heavy armor, and are so resilient that most battles with them quickly devolve into a melee slog.
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: They enslave and assimilate everyone they come across, permanently, and kill off anyone they can't.
- Tentacled Terror: Just look at the page image.
Lapha
Lapha
- Body Surf: She jumps into Garamm's body after her old body is devoured by another alien. Later, she does the same to Sydney when she can't get access to Maxima, thinking that taking over Sydney would give her access to the orbs.
- Bullying a Dragon: Even after she sees just how powerful Maxima is, she still tries going after her.
- Custom-Built Host: Her body is implied to have been some sort of artificial construct. After it's eaten, she starts shopping on "meatblanks.galnet" for a new one, with Garamm offering some less-than-welcome input on the customizations.
- Demonic Possession: Downplayed. Her true form is the flame-eye thing floating at her brow, and she can transfer it from body to body. However, she only truly "possesses" the body if it's an Empty Shell. When she jumps into a body with a prior occupant, she has to share. This is a problem when she posesses Sydney, since somehow the orbs still know which conciousness is Sydney's and only obey her, not Lapha, so Sydney can keep them away from her hands. Also, she can influence Sydney's body, but can't fully control it, meaning that she's not able to keep Sydney from eating, which ends up being how she's removed from Sydney.
- Dark and Troubled Past: It turns out her species are essentially magical Artificial Intelligences that can also reproduce...with risks. She spent the first two weeks of her existence watching her parents "slowly glitch to oblivion" in front of her, unable to do anything about it. She then grew up as an orphan on the streets.
- Face Death with Dignity: After jumping out of Sydney's body without another body to survive in, Lapha quickly realizes the situation she's in but only gives a quick and simple FU to the universe that gave her a poor start in life as she starts to fade away, before Dabbler saves her by moving her consciousness into another vessal.Lapha: "Fuck you, universe. You were not worth... the price... of admission."
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Though Sydney is moved to tears by her Dark and Troubled Past, she and Maxima are quick to point out that it doesn't excuse kidnapping.
- Oh, Crap!: After seeing that Maxima is fast enough to move even when she's in a stasis beam, she has a complete Freak Out.
- Power Tattoo: Played with when it's revealed that as punishment for her attempted bodynapping of Sydney, she now has a tattoo-like sigil on her lower belly that locks her in her physical body.
- Sharing a Body:
- With Garamm. The arrangement is only temporary until she can get a new one. She also requests that, for legal reasons, he not refer to the act as "possession".
- When she returns, she's taken the body of a fellow Lithling that is a friend of Parfait's in order to get close to Sydney, so she can take her body and the power of the orbs. While she does end up sharing Sydney's body, the orbs still only obey Sydney's consciousness. This leads to both of them getting locked up in a blacksite cell made to contain Halo.
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Surprisingly averted. She makes no secret of why she wants to kidnap Max, and her possession of an inhabited body could be considered a kind of slavery in itself. But even when pointing out that her Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse, the other characters don't bring it up. Possibly an attempt to avoid sending her over the Moral Event Horizon.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Almost literally how she's ejected from Sydney's body; when Sydney takes a bite of one of her favorite dishes (read:something so spicy that its mere presence could be used for mace), Lapha takes the heat so poorly that she leaves Sydney's body almost immediately, despite the lack of another body to jump into almost killing her before Dabbler saves her by taking her into another vessal.
Garamm
Garamm
- Affably Evil: He's pretty polite and easygoing, even dispensing some romantic advice to some humans who happen to catch sight of them. He's also perfectly willing to kidnap Maxima for money and sell her off to the highest bidder.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Lapha certainly thinks so.
- Demonic Possession: Discussed. After Lapha jumps into his body, he asks her if she's possessing him. She requests that he not refer to the act as such for legal reasons.
- Jagged Mouth: Courtesy of his "lip tusks".
- Sharing a Body: With Lapha after they're forced to abandon their mission and Lapha's original body got eaten.
- Sleeping with the Boss: He's certainly trying to. He tries to play off getting close to her as instinctual.
- The Unsmile: His "lip tusks" makes his attempt at a smile disturbing.
