A list (and tropes) of the characters in the online webcomic, Power Pills
Power Pills
Caleb/Soul Seer
Caleb Budde
A socially-awkward college student who was trying to make friends at a party when he encounters Lightbringer.- Alliterative Name: His superhero name has two "S"s for Soul Seer.
- Atrocious Alias: Kate certainly thinks so after he changes his rather unimaginative hero name of "Mind Reader" (What the press had called him) to an equally unimaginative "Soul Seer" which are just synonyms of the previous name.
- Cool Kid-and-Loser Friendship: Caleb is a socially awkward mess so he's lucky that Guy is a fairly popular guy who tries getting him new friends. The series kickoffs when Caleb is invited to Guy's party, makes a fool of himself there and meets a civilian Lightbringer.
- Glowing Eyes: Activating his Mind Control abilities makes his eyes glow a brilliant yellow and so do his mind-controlled victims. Overexerting his telepathy has the same effect on his naturally blue eyes.
- Eye Colour Change: From blue to bright yellow whenever he activates his mind-control powers.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: One application of his Mind Control is by making people forget his and the team's faces and civilian names if they are out of costume. Travis is a repeat offender due to Caleb being unable to tell him the truth even though he's a trusted friend and everybody else in his inner circle has already known since the beginning.
- No Social Skills: As Guy would best put it when Caleb makes a fool of himself at a college party:Guy: "I think I'm starting to see what you mean when you say you're 'socially awkward'"
- However, Caleb grew out of these tendencies once he became a superhero and met others who had taken the power pills, needing to pull his weight as The Leader.
- Yellow/Purple Contrast: Caleb has purple as his favorite color and usually wears a purple Potridge hoodie but he's also notably the only one to not have their signature colour corresponding to their power pill and Power Glow which is yellow. His costume as Soul Seer reflects this as it's a light purple ninja outfit with yellow accents like his face mask, bandages and headband.
Dan/Wax Guise
Daniel Wirsh
See him as Waxguise
An aspiring actor who was skeptical that superpowers let alone superheroes actually exist. On his first acting gig he had in months, he comes down sick which Lightbringer took advantage of by disguising himself as a stage technician to give him "medication".
- Cat Girl: Gender-inverted. After gaining his powers, he subconsciously shapeshifts a cat tail and sometimes cat ears under strong emotions, in human form. His tail gets so much attention that there's a whole subreddit called "r/Tailguise" and Gemma includes it in all her Wax Guise figurines.
- Delinquent Hair: Sports an all-too-cool mohawk and is the only part of his head he doesn't hide as Wax Guise.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: For mythical animals or creatures that don't exist, Wax Guise makes use of animalistic and/or humanoid hybrids. For example, if he wants to shapeshift into a unicorn, he must transform into a regular horse with a narwhal horn but doesn't get the abilities of such.
- Portmanteau: His superhero name combines the words "Wax" (Since wax is easily moldable like shapeshifting) and "Disguise" (Since he can theoretically be anyone and anything with his abilities).
Merri/Bulletproof
Meredith Bodkin
See her as Bulletproof
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A ballet dancer who always dream of playing Clara in the Nutcracker until it almost came crashing down with one broken ankle. Fortunately, Lightbringer sneaks into her apartment for an ultimatum, take a pill and become better or don't and kiss those lifelong dreams goodbye.
- Badasses Wear Bandanas: Bulletproof wears one covering half her face as part of her western-themed hero get-up.
- Dance Battler: Bulletproof would let you know she's a dancer as she mops the floor with you using her ballet moves.
- Early-Bird Cameo: In Dan's chapter, she was seen in the tour group that the pickpocketer was targeting before properly debuting as the third superhero Bulletproof.
- Combat Stilettos: Deliberately choose high-heeled cowboy boots for her costume to add more damage to her kicks.
- Cover-Blowing Superpower: Barely managed to avoid this when undergoing Power Incontinence. It didn't help that Merri has a flashy set of superpowers and showcased it right in front of a live audience during the Nutcracker. Luckily, with quick thinking from Percy, she passed it off as the tech guys messing around.
- Flashy Teleportation: How she teleports by disappearing and reappearing in a puff of blue mist, punctuated with a "Bamf/Foof" sound effect.
- Cowgirl: Her superhero theme complete with the obligatory bandana and cowboy boots.
- Flight: Turns out Lightbringer was exclusively using the blue pill for teleportation as Merri finds out its other power of flying firsthand by uncontrollably levitating. This almost exposed her powers during the Nutcracker play as she pirouetted up to the rafters.
- Immune to Bullets: Names herself Bulletproof after getting shot point-blank in the face and lived to tell the tale.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Discovers she has selective immunity after taking a bullet straight to the forehead. However, she's not fully impervious as it momentarily stunned her and left a pretty bad-looking bruise, hence the "selective" part.
- True Blue Femininity: Blue is her signature color scheme and is the girliest of the female Power Pills. She also likes dresses and skirts for casual wear and superhero outfit and is an aspiring ballerina as a civilian.
Kristy/Quickwit
Kristy Eda
See her as Quickwit
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A troubled artist constantly suffering from not only her financial troubles but also from her insomnia.
- Ninja: A high-tech one in contrast to Travis' old-school karate-based ninja with her costume being a black skin-tight jumpsuit with futuristic orange visor and matching bow and quiver.
- Power-Strain Blackout: Unlike the others, she can only use her powers a few minutes at a time before collapsing from Sensory Overload which still persisted long after mastering them.
Tate/Streamline
Tate Palmer
See her as Streamline
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An exuberant cosplayer. On the way back from a convention, Lightbringer deliberately drops his pill pack in front of her after theatrically showcasing his powers.
- Red Ones Go Faster: Tate's signature colour is red and she's the team's speedster.
- Shout-Out: Her costume has a striking resemblance to Quicksilver's original design only with a different colour scheme. According to bookfangeek in a tweet
, this was completely unintentional. - Super-Strength: The reason why she chooses the red power pill in the first place, gifting her unparalleled strength to effortlessly punch through concrete walls and clobber baddies to a pulp.
Secondary Cast
Project S.
Lightbringer
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The strips on his super-suit lights up the colour of the power in use with white as his default. He has all eight colours of the Power Pillsnote at the beginning but gradually loses them one by one as he gives them away.
- De-power: As Lightbringer's job is to find suitable recruits and give them a portion of his powers, he's currently down to only one out of the initial eight Power Pills that grant him his abilities.
- Light Is Not Good: He wears an all-white super suit, glows all the colors of the rainbow and then some when using his powers and his superhero name is literally "Lightbringer" but recruits people in the shadiest and most invasive way possible by acting as a drug dealer, stalking them and/or breaking into their houses in the dead of night. Not to mention how he deals with the baddies such as when he swiftly broke an ordinary burglar's leg without mercy.
- Shock and Awe: The grey Power Pill became his next go-to after giving the blue Power Pill away to Merri. That is until Sybil chooses this power for himself once it's his turn.
- Shout-Out: His hero costume is a similar design to Frozone's super suit and was even called as such by the fans.
- Teleportation Spam: Out of the Power Pills, Lightbringer is seen using the blue pill the most exclusively for the teleportation which the author herself notes it being his favorite power. He was even nicknamed "Bunny Man" by the fans for how erratically and spontaneously he jumped from place to place before his actual superhero name was given.
Caleb's Friends
Guy
Guy Alonzo Foust
Caleb's cool and (initially) only friend.- Sidekick: He was unofficially part of the Power Pills as Soul Seer's sidekick when it was only just him. It was a one-time experience in which the villains were only ordinary bank robbers and retired once Soul Seer joined up with similarly powered-up individuals to take down bigger superpowered threats.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Even though Guy is not focused upon anymore after the first chapter with more Power Pills and their friends were introduced, it was him bringing Caleb to a college party in hopes of making friends who then encountered a civilian Lightbringer and the rest is history.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Guy is not amused at anybody who pokes fun at his name.
- What the Hell, Hero?: He gets incredibly mad at Caleb for using his powers on Travis instead of telling the truth about his superhero identity like everyone else in their closed circle.
Travis
Travis Samuel Birman
A cheerful and goofy fellow. He's the only one in the friend group who is completely unaware that the main cast are superheroes, despite greatly admiring and supporting them because Caleb couldn't bring himself to tell him.- Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman: He's dating Merri and thinks Bulletproof is a Stalker with a Crush not knowing they are the same person, no thanks to Dan and Caleb's disastrous wingmen attempts at a Rescue Romance.
Avery Rodriguez
Avery Guinness Rodriguez
- Abusive Parents: Somewhat downplayed since his parents seem loving and understanding in Avery's flashback but had given him away to Future Tech without any objection though it's reluctant judging by their sullen expressions. The court judge had them charged with parental negligence after Avery's trial.
- The Baby of the Bunch: Avery is the only character in Power Pills who isn't out of high school yet, being only 15 years old (For comparison Caleb is 19).
- Brainwashed and Crazy: When Avery first showed up, he was a psychopathic villain who attacked over sixty people. It was later revealed that his actions were being remotely controlled by the microchip that Future Tech had implanted in his brain.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Celeb peeked into his mindscape and found memories of Avery being heavily bullied, his parents giving him away to Future Tech where he was painfully experimented on and given his nasty, snaking surgical scar. And this was at the age of fifteen.
- Eye Colour Change: He has dark brown eyes but whatever surgery Future Tech did on him turned his right eye into an unnatural purple colour.
- Healing Factor: Any physical damage he receives can simply fizzle away in a cloud of smoke. It's so strong that he can survive normally fatal injuries such as a glass shard to the brain or impalement. The only area where it doesn't heal is the right side of his face as evidenced by his ever-present surgical scar.
Villians
Future Tech
Living Scarecrow
- Glasgow Grin: A defining feature of Living Scarecrow is the surgical stitches that run across his jawline which is a trademark of Future Tech employees both current and former like Avery.
- No Name Given: We are not given his official supervillain let alone civilian name so we can only go off Caleb's insulting nickname.
Shady Figure
An ex-salesman who became fed-up with his dead-end job and life and decided to join Future Tech in recruiting others for their extremely sketchy superpower program (Ironically like a salesman would).
- An Arm and a Leg: After overexerting his powers, the darkness corrupted one of his arms and legs and finds himself unable to move or feel anything from the waist down.
- No Name Given: The salesperson was not referred to by name in-story and was such given this nickname for the way he recruits into Future Tech and his shadow-based abilities.
- Irony: To escape his dead-end job as a salesman, he works for Future Tech and is tasked with recruiting others...by pitching to them exactly like a salesman.
Others
Jared, Lana and Reggie
Three college students who attempted to rob a bank, only to be thwarted by Soul Seer and Lightbringer.
- Blatant Burglar: How obvious can you be robbing the bank in ski masks and all-black clothing.
- Starter Villain: They are the first villains the Power Pills faced when it consisted of only Caleb. Subsequent bad guys become more dangerous and difficult after their defeat.
