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Project Nemesis

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Home arrow ORE Superheroes arrow Applying Axes of Design to Comic Universes
Applying Axes of Design to Comic Universes PDF Print E-mail
Written by kent808state, James O'Rance   
Thursday, 08 February 2007

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This is one of the more interesting aspects of the Wild Talents book to me. To get full details and Mr. Hite's full slate of examples for the axes, you'll need the book. But it made me wonder how some of the settings of my favorite comics might stack up. What ratings would you assign the comics you like?

To review, the four color-coded axes proposed by Mr. Hite are:
Red: Historical Inertia (to what degree can/have Talents change the world?)
Gold: Talent Inertia (to what degree do the roles of Talents or the public perceptions of Talents change over time?)
Blue: The Lovely and the Pointless (just how much weird shit goes on in the setting—is the paranormal focused on one factor or does it include everything from alien invasions to active ancient pantheons of gods?)
Black: Moral Clarity (how black and white are the moral choices posed to people in this world? Is it moral anarchy or straight good vs. evil?)

Each axis is rated from 1 (low) to 5 (high). For example, the book defines Dennis Detwiller's default Wild Talents setting as Red 2, Gold 3, Blue 1, and Black 2. The setting of Shane Ivey's White Knights, Black Hearts adventure is Red 2, Gold 3, Blue 2, and Black 3.

I'll throw a few major series out there that seemed to have a bit of a Wild Talents feel to me (several of which Hite references, at least in terms of one axis): the Warren Ellis run on the Authority, the Marc Millar run on Ultimate X-Men, The Ultimates, Ed Brubaker's Sleeper? How about the Joss Whedon Astonishing X-Men or the Grant Morrison JLA run? Here are two suggestions of my own, with commentary.

Invincible by Kirkman and Ottley (I've only read the first 6 trades of this great series)

InvincibleRed 3—At least up through issue 25 or so. There just isn't that much evidence yet that all the superhuman slugfests, alien invasion insanity and high-tech gadgetry floating around have done much to change typical America suburban life. Not so in at least one of the alternate Earths ruled by Omni-Man and Invincible, and with this title who knows what is coming, but this seems to be the status quo.

Gold 2—Mark is going through changes in his heroic identity and status, there are clearly retired heroes about, people are added to or demoted from teams, and Omni-Man went from being world's greatest hero to . . . something else--and isn't through changing, I suspect.

Blue 5—The setting is loaded with everything under the sun: Atlantean kingdom, angry shapeshifting Martians, evil alien empire, alternate dimensions, and so forth. What's more, many of these elements play an essential role in the plot.

Black 3—This was tricky. Mark is faced with some tough choices and is generally a "good" super hero. But guys like the Immortal routinely toss people into space. And Omni-Man fooled a lot of people, pulling a huge shocker on the readership. You know there are many other plots afoot. Still, the general impression is that the people who seem heroic are ethical and good—the ones who pull the whammies are the ones who seemed suspicious to begin with, at least to me.

Abnett and Lanning Legion of Superheroes Run
Legion of Superheroes
Red 1
—The Legion has a huge effect on the course of interstellar events, not the least of which is protecting Earth from invasion. The presence of certain Talents plays a key role in interstellar transportation, first via the Step Drive and then through the Threshold Gate system.

Gold 4
—The members of the Legion stay pretty steadfast in their roles—Mon El's temporary membership in Leland McCauley's morally suspect Overwatch team is an exception to the rule, quickly rectified when he sees what is really going on.

Blue 4—Lots of science fiction, aliens, pseudo-science, and so forth in this setting. I don't see enough magic actively at work in the DnA Legion (as opposed to earlier incarnations) or evidence of alien gods and such to push this to Blue 4, though it's on the borderline. It just seems to me that Abnett and Lanning concentrated more clearly on soft s.f. rationales for everything going on.

Black 4: The underlying ethical question of the rise of Robotica and the treatment of the once dictatorial but now vulnerable little aliens called the Chosen (if I recall correctly) raise interesting gray areas. But I think both of those were resolved in a sort of Star Trek style fashion, with fundamental respect for sentient rights and such triumphing. But the presence of those kinds of dilemmas kept this incarnation of the Legion out of the Black 5 range for me.

The Aberrant RPG setting, published by White Wolf Game Studios.

AberrantAberrant is set ten years after super-powered humans started appearingone day in 1998. The setting deals with how meta-human novas fit intoa mundane world when they most definitely are not mundane, as well as how the mundane populace react to the sudden emergence of novas.

Red 2 - Although novas have had only ten years to affect the world,they have already had an enormous impact. You could almost consider Aberrant to be set at Red 1, were it not for the fact that mundanepeople and governments still have a degree of influence and impact in the world.

Gold 2 - Novas are basically the celebrities of the Aberrant setting.

Blue 1 - There is a "point source" origin for nova powers, and while alien races do exist in the setting, they have minimal or no impactupon the world for decades/centuries to come. Novas are the only paranormal beings on Earth.

Black 2 - Like just about every other WWGS game setting, Aberrant deals in many shades of grey.

Despite having all low scores on the four design axes, Aberrant can hardly be considered a low-powered setting. The most powerful characters possess the ability to shatter mountains, time travel, or even create their own universes!

 

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.

 
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