The Weekly Sketchbook
Each week during my 9-5 job's morning meetings, I like to doodle on the service report I print out. Sometimes the sketches are geometric or nonsensical (at one point I went through a maze faze) and sometimes they give birth to new Heroics or Deviants.
A while back I had come up with this idea of a WWII graphic novel about a bunch of Deviants sent into Germany to fight the Nazis. I have always been a big WWII fan and movies like the Dirty Dozen, Das Boot, Force 10 and even more recently Band of Brothers or Inglorious Bastards. Why not then do a mashup of these and Suicide Squad? It was a fun idea that I rolled around the noodle for a bit but ultimately was never excited enough about to take any further.
Last week, riding the Blue Line in to town, I thought of one of my favorite WWII movies, Kelly's Heroes. It's a fun romp starring Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland about a group of soldiers who want to rob Hitler of some gold. Hollywood did an update of this a while back starring Clooney called We Three Kings, but Kelly's Heroes did it best. This got me thinking again about the WWII Deviant idea and what it would look like if they weren't sent in to Germany, but went on their own to rob the Nazis! Now I was excited.
The morning meeting went on for a while and my pen worked furiously, sketching out the bottom dwelling madmen crazy enough to want to go into a warzone for some gold and glory.
The lineup from left to right are: Mr. Ghastly, a half-zombie; Snowfall, an aging stage magician who can freeze things with a touch; The Ugly Archer; Golden Back, a doctor who made a formula that could turn him into a golden backed gorilla for one hour at a time; Professor Perfect, the most evil genius alive; Blue Dragon, a mystic who can fly and shoot blue flames; Crimson Dame, a mob assassin and the Eyeball, a hypnotist with a flair for the dramatic.
I named them the Filthy Few and the basic idea of the adventure is that the three core members, Ugly Archer, Prof. Perfect and Snowfall all are tired of being beaten up trying to rob banks in Centropolis. It just so happens that the Archer knows a guy who's brother is over in France and keeps talking about all of the swag they are taking back from the Nazis when they liberate a town. One bad decision leads to another and off they go.
I won't say much more now, as I'd like to develop this idea further, but keep an eye out for more!
KEB!
Perhaps a worthwhile excursion for testing via a RPG session with the deviants you already know, plus the most upstanding person you know (ME!) as well to help propagate some more ideas around this.
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