Power Twins Comics

I felt a little bad about digging out old work to get another buffer of updates scheduled, until I remembered that almost no one has seen this, despite its almost success.

I’ve been somewhat vocal that I was an avid player of “City of Heroes / City of Villains.”  I still play occasionally, but not nearly as much as when we were actively promoting the game.  While I was still leveling up my second “epic” level character, NC Soft held a comic creator contest.  The rules were that it had to be 4 to 9 pages (plus cover), the artwork had to be taken from in game screen shots (minor photoshopping allowed), and not violate anyone’s copyright.  The prizes included about a thousand dollars in software, gameplay subscriptions, and a nice video card.

Figuring I might have a shot at winning such a contest (or at least getting some exposure), I wrote a “short” nine page story, got some friends together to coordinate costumes and plan a shooting script, and took a lot of screen shots.

The result was Les Professionnels issue 1: “One for the Monet.”

The title is an exploitation play on French spelling, and tribute to one of my favorite films, by one of my favorite screenwriters.

I always wanted to do more with these characters, so here we are launching it as a PTC title.  Please enjoy our not quite winning entry over the next few weeks.

This week’s update is the cover.  For the record, I went intentionally “minimalist” on the design of the cover, and when I saw other entries, regretted it.

One of the things Marc and I always try to avoid is what we call a “Linear Joke.”  It’s usually something that’s hilarious, but only if you’ve gone down a particular path, and have that whole path in mind when the punch line is delivered.  If you got there by different means, you look at the punch line and say “huh?”

The Pros had a significant number of linear and specific reference jokes.  Most of them on purpose.  As a contest, NC Soft specifically wanted the entries to have references to their game and setting.  Page 1 opened with a reference to Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (now on Boomerang), but most of the short was grounded in the nuance of Paragon City (City of Heroes’ primary setting).

There were references to cell phones in some in game content, but there was no way for a hero to actually be seen using one.  Every hero over level 10 got issued a police radio (complete with holographic interface), from which they could receive missions to thwart crimes.

The inability show Lil’ Pro whip out her Nokia 1100, led to this awkward little bit with the police radio.

Of course, the patch released right after the contest included an emote “cellphone” for player characters to be seen doing just that.

One of the “linear” jokes I was talking about is the ridiculousness of player character names in City of Heroes/Villains.  Dr. Dark Dark Evil Dark (mentioned on page 2) was not far off from a guy one of my villain characters pulled a heist with once.

I was just going to do a rip of Ocean’s 11.  It was so poorly received by people who didn’t remember the “you think we need another guy” scene, that I dropped it, and this scene became about names.

On the first day of City of Heroes’ public release, the names of several characters I had created were already taken. I wound up having to use synonyms, alternate spellings, and parodies to get the character names I wanted.

For those who don’t play MMO Games, I’ll digress a little. When you play one of these games, you do so as a “player [controlled] character,” in a copy of the fictional world called a “server.” City of Heroes operates 16 such servers. On each server, each player character must have a unique name. It’s like an email address at a given email provider.  So, where I might be able to play a character named “Power Kid” on one server, that name was taken by other people on the other 15. So it is unavailable to me on any of those other servers.

For the record, no variation of the names “Power Kid” nor “Spike Power” was played by Marc or me on any CoH server.

Lil’ Pro actually had this same problem.  We were able to make “Big Pro,” but “Little Pro” was already taken. Naming “Venti” was an extension of this, and a jab at a certain trend in restaurants.

Also for the record, the Pros had “Super Jumping” as their travel power.  That’s what they’re doing here.  This isn’t a rip of the closing credits of “The Man Show.”

In every “MMO” I know there’s no such thing as death.  If, as a player, you are defeated or “killed” you pop back to some sort of rally point from where you have to run back to your comrades.  Different games have different variations on this sort of thing… some make you run back to the spot where you fell to loot your own body to get your gear back.  It sounds creepier than it is, but kind of unsettling the first few times.

City of Heroes has one of the lightest death “penalties” of any of these games.  When you fall “defeated,” you click a button and are instantly teleported to the hospital, where you appear on a transporter pad with full health ready to run right back into battle.  Don’t dwell on Paragon City operating that way, the plot completely unravels if you do.

I don’t smoke, as a habit.  I have had the occasional cigar, but, unlike many writers, I don’t feel the need to sweat nicotine into my work.  That being said, I’ve had nearly as many pro-smoking references in comics as I have lies about Neil Armstrong. My favorite was in The Tick Golden Age #3 in which The Tick stops a petty criminal lighting up under a “No Smoking” sign, wrapping him up with the iron post, and admonishing him thusly, “You criminals are so cruel! Let’s see how you like being rolled up and set on fire!”

One of the great things City of Heroes has (had) better than all of the MMOs which came before it was the ability to completely craft your character’s appearance (within some fairly wide limits).  It was all about costume pieces and options.  We did a strip about Power Kid selecting his superhero costume, and another about Spike with the same theme.  Like jumping off a building, a fundamental part of being a superhero is designing a costume.

City of Heroes had three basic body types; male, female, and huge.  Each had its own set of particular costume pieces which could only be used on that body type.  The ability to smoke was restricted to male and huge.  Paragon City had a city wide, absolutely enforced “no smoking ordinance” for women… only.

Some time later, an add on costume pack was made available for purchase, which included a cigarette which could be put in a female’s mouth… “you’ve come a long way, baby.”

This concludes Les Professionnels.  With the closing of City of Heroes, the sequels I wanted to do will likely never happen. On the up side, “One for the Monet” was one of the top ten finalists in the “Create a Comic Contest”.  We did not win prizes, and NC Soft never exhibited the finalists.