Create the perfect superteam

The Newsboy's Legion

Clark Kent
Peter Parker
Jack Ryder
Vic Sage
Alan Scott
Me

-- Huck (handsomishbo...), September 1st, 2004.

and no doubt I'm missing others from Marvel?

Unlike Martin's team powers would not be a factor. Because this is comics it would generally win anyway, and because this team is a bit dodgy it would sometimes not win, or win only at some horrible cost, or be forced into doing something awful in order to win.

Who would be in it? I'll have a think. But the team should include:

A heroic leader.
An untrustworthy but brilliant deputy.
A loose cannon
A love interest
A comic foil
A raw rookie
A genius, possibly robotic
An enigma

PLUS! A mysterious boss. AND An arch-villain. These last two can be one and the same but not until issue #12.

Actual picks to follow sometime soon.

Blade
Cassidy from Preacher

Nightcrawler
Lucifer
(Arc)Angel

The Punisher
Batman
Mr. Sensitive

And Wolverine, to sell this horrible team book.

(x-post)

So:

BATMAN. Why? Because he's Batman. His super power is competence. Sometimes I think he works best -- albeit least frequently -- on team books.

DR STRANGE. Because this is a team with Batman on it, which means it's not some penny-ante matching-jacket team living in an abandoned firehouse with a haunted computer that tells them when and where danger's gonna strike in Hudleyville, it's a TEAM SUPREME, and they get the Sorcerer Supreme. Stephen and Bruce can trade anecdotes about the idle rich.

VALERIA VON DOOM. I don't know what happened to the one Claremont introduced, but this is her or an alternate universe version of her a few years later -- the daughter of Susan Storm Richards and Dr Doom, a technological genius, a quasi-sorta-mutant, a mystic novice, and more psychologically screwed up than Claremont had her. You know what, bulk up that mystic novice bit too, give her a huge mystical power that she doesn't know how to control and isn't sure what she can do with, too.

AMAZO. This Amazo was nearly destroyed in a big battle of some kind, and had the evil programmed out of it by Valeria while she tinkered with it, but it still didn't function well enough to be of much use. Then a disembodied Dr Doom, passing through this time period from some Who Knows When where he's never heard of Valeria, animated the android and became stuck there because of the mystical aspects of Val's tinkering. His consciousness and personality control the android now, but Val's no-evil-at-all firewall is still in place, so he's forced to be good!

AMETHYST. Yeah, the one from Gemworld or whatever. I hardly remember anything about her. But she could totally be redone in that Silver-Age-filtered-through-Grant-Morrison way (when I think "perfect superteam," I seem to think "Morrison's JLA," judging by how I'm going about this), and she's got plenty of backstory you can draw on/reintroduce, but she's enough of a cipher personality-wise that she can fill in whatever dramatic blanks are necessary.

SUPERBOY. He's the muscle. He's the least serious one. He's got the most to live up to. He'll hit on the girls.

Other great teams: Morrison's JLA, Suicide Squad, L.E.G.I.O.N. (having the untrustworthy genius BE the leader, nice one! It got a bit embarrassing when they just started re-doing Blakes 7 though), Dad's Army.

I like military settings a lot, I think.

The 'family' model of superteams does nothing for me, nor does the super-club idea (though I do like the LSH). Claremont was always a bit too cosy about his teams, too*

*(the best thing about New and Astonishing X-Men is clearly Emma Frost, who oddly is a combination of two classic Claremont tropes - Strong Woman and Villain Seeks Sanctuary - that he had never thought to merge.)

Cypher
Shadowcat
Antibody (New Universe)
Swift
Black Panther
Mystique
Thunderbird (either I or II)

Animal Man
Ambush Bug
Flash (Stop! Buy this comic or I'm doomed!)
Dr Doom, 'cos he beat up Stan Lee. He'd be the bad boy of the group.
Master Mind (from Buster)
Cliff Hanger (ditto)
Ace Garp

"We're all going to be wiped from reality - and replaced with hot teen versions of ourselves!"
"But how can we fight - OUR OWN PLOT?"

Emma Frost
Jean Grey
Rachel Summers
Franklin Richards
Destiny

THE TEEN DEFENDERS

Mindstorm - Telepathic and telekinetic; his big weapon is to blast his opponents' brains with psychic energy. Basic All-American straight-A African-American teen male; this was the Mary-Sue character. (The plot lines I had planned for him should have made people very worried about my state of mind.)

Barricade - Teenaged daughter of an American diplomat. She's telekinetic, but her power only manifests itself in the form walls of force that she can move and manipulate, hence the name. (She flies by riding one of these walls like a surfboard). Modelled after my huge junior-high crush.

Bandit - Teenaged street kid. Teleporter. He creates portals that he can dart into and re-appear anywhere else within eyesight; used to use this skill to pick pockets. Very, very bitter about his hard-knock life. He was Puerto Rican like one of my best friends but had the exact opposite outlook and attitude.

Shrapnel - Teenaged street kid. Ran with Bandit but isn't as hard-hearted. Her power is odd; she can generate this shell of "darkforce" around her body that makes her nigh-invulnerable and super-strong. This shell can also be "detonated" into shards of darkforce that can do some serious damage. I didn't really model her after anyone. (Bandit and Shrapnel ended up having more of a history together than either of them realized.)

Pentagram - The resident teenage mystic. He can do odd, arcane things to anything that has a pentagram inscribed on it and carries 5-point throwing stars as his main offensive weapon. He was also original (and at one point he was to go batshit insane and attempt to destroy the world).

Electrode - Teenaged girl with electrical powers. Due to a government experiment, she has microcircuitry and nanotechnology implanted all throughout her epidermis which activates when she uses her powers, turning her into a logic-controlled cyborg fighting machine. She was actually the catylist for bringing the team together; the fallout of the operation that created her caused the government to gather other teens with paranormal abilities together to keep them out of the clutches of the unscrupulous (aw how nice of them; yes, there was a plot there) and these six ended up training together in an ROTC-esque program as back up the government-sanctioned paranormal teams (Stilleto, Hammer, Anvil, Bolo, Lycos, Thunderpunch and Gyro).

(Barricade took over as leader and I can't remember if I came up with a new character to take Psychoshock's place.)