Right after I posted, I realized that the Grey Ghost was inspired by the Spirit, and I hadn't even thought of the Shadow (to say nothing of the Crimson Avenger, who I'm not familiar with).

I don't have the time, money, or computing power for City of Heroes, but from what I've seen of it, it looks like a pretty badass game. Out of curiosity, what kind of superpowers does the Silver Spectre have? Similar to his forebears (sneaking around in the night; scaring the crap out of, then beating down bad guys)?

Zack

He's what the game calls a Natural Scrapper (Natural because he didn't get his powers from a scientific accident, genetic mutation, technological gizmo, or magical study, although the last could be argued, since he has a Shadowesque "trained by ancient mystic monks in Tibet" background; Scrapper indicates he's a hand-to-hand combat specialist with no ranged attacks).

Thus far (the in-game version is up to Security Level 10, which is senior enough to found a Supergroup but still not particularly badass, relatively speaking), he has a range of spiffy martial-arts moves, a number of powers based on Super Reflexes which enable him to avoid damage of various kinds, a machinegun punch power which is the precursor to Super-Speed (he'll be eligible for that at SL14), and Stealth, which is partial invisibility.

So, yeah, basically he sneaks around looking for trouble, then suddenly appears and clobbers the bad guys with his fists and feet. The game's basic advancement design, where you earn new powers as you advance in level, works very well with his "rusty, but it's coming back to him" character concept; the more "super" powers he's starting to develop, like Stealth and the beginnings of Super-Speed, I explain as the ongoing recovery of the secret techniques he learned from the monks of Lakan Pakor as a young traveler in the early 1930s, before his first hero career began. (They may call it "Stealth" in the game, but I know it's really the Power to Cloud the Minds of Men. :)

None of that is actually important to the mechanics of the game, but it is a role-playing game, after all, even if 95% or so of the people playing it don't seem to get that part.

(Oh - and the Crimson Avenger was another of the Golden Age "masked hero in a nice suit" type of comic-book hero, like the Spirit or the Sandman, until the spandex costume thing became all the rage and he ended up in a goofy red outfit with a fin on his head. The original version had a cameo appearance in the Justice League Unlimited episode "This Little Piggy" as the guy in the dark suit and red cape who knocks on the door of the suburban house and tells the person who answers that he's looking for a pig.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

>
>(Oh - and the Crimson Avenger was another of the Golden Age "masked
>hero in a nice suit" type of comic-book hero, like the Spirit or the
>Sandman,

I wish I was a better artist, because this conjured up an image of GQ: the Best Dressed Superhero issue, with the Shadow, the Spirit, and maybe the Green Hornet, on the cover.

Zack

Nice list, but shouldn't it include Zorro? He was always up to fashion before it was cool. And while we're being multicultural, should we include Yuri Daniels and Carmen Sandiego?

t.
thinks something like that would be a pretty neat piece of fan art for any of the Eyrie productions.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"If we are marked to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater the share of honour
God's will I pray thee wish not one man more" - Henry V, Act, IV Scene III

-NeoRaven
Hobbes: "I've never seen raisen bran do that before."
Calvin: "I put in an alcaseltzer."

The character design system is, to put it simply, robust.

Except for those designed to look that way, like the Henshin Squad.

>The character design system is, to put it simply, robust.

And how.

Dare I ask?

Though I myself do not play it, it sounds like a riff on Sailor Moon.

I can think of several ways to create the Sailor Moon-style seifuku in that system.

No; they're a sentai team. They're named after Japanese foodstuffs (Soba and Yakitori are the only two I can remember right now).

Here are four of them posing for a photo in Atlas Plaza:

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

words fail me

...

They really do.

Wow.

*shatter*

But that's pretty damn funny.

-NeoRaven
Hobbes: "I've never seen raisin bran do that before."
Calvin: "I put in an alcaseltzer."

hey give them a little credit.. it takes guts to go out and fight crime wearing that..... o.o

Point. Still... *Shakes his head*

>Necropotence, Viagra for zombies.
>For those days when you just cant raise the dead.

W... T... F...
*Breaks*

-NeoRaven
Hobbes: "I've never seen raisin bran do that before."
Calvin: "I put in an alcaseltzer."

I hear that the company that make CoH are coming out with an expansion called City of Villains, so you can the bad guys too.

-------------
Lead me not to temptation, for I can find it myself.

More or less. They don't have the same motivation as the City of Heroes Sky Raiders, but they use similar equipment, and the name is the obvious choice for any such group. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/