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This month, I'm not going to be doing redesigns of costumes, just taking a shot at drawing some characters from a web comic I enjoy reading. Unlike most of my favorite web comics, Union of Heroes is a photo comic. Also, it's based in Bochum, Germany, which gives it a little different feel.
A great logo isn't all that a good comic needs, but it sure doesn't hurt. I did this 3D model in sketchup based on eye-balling the Union logo.
This is the story of Marc Ridbeck, a young man whose girlfriend recently dumped him because she said he was boring. Marc is just a regular guy, who lives on his own in a tastefully furnished, brightly lit apartment One day, Marc awakens to the smell of breakfast cooking only to find a grandfatherly gentleman cooking an omelette. This man is a super-hero from a parallel universe, or maybe a super-hero recruiter, and he's come to take Marc back to his universe to take the place of a recently felled hero.
He calls himself "The One Who Knows" and, apparently, he does. As well, he makes a nice omelet, according to Marc. Marc is needed to fill the shoes, or boots, left by... Marc. In old man's universe, Marc was the hero called Erzengel. The name is a pun in German. I won't spoil it for you.
After breakfast, Marc agrees to travel to the parallel Earth with the One Who Knows. He's a little surprised to find himself in an identical apartment, the home of his missing counterpart in this universe. The One gives him a sedative to ease the pain as his powers manifest for the first time. The One explains some of the history of Marc's family in this world, and Marc learns that his powers are due to a mutation caused by exposure to something while trapped in a mine, following a cave-in. When he recovers from the transformation, Marc finds that he can absorb the properties of metal and transform his body. In one scene, he makes a knife blade from his right hand and cuts his finger on the sharp edge.
Then, while Marc is sitting there channel surfing (some things, it appears, are universal) he gets a surprise, in the form of his former (in his world) girlfriend, Jana. Jana, being the girlfriend of a super-hero, seems to take his sudden appearance in stride. When you think about it, heroes coming back from the dead is so common, their relatives should probably save the expense of funerals and such. Even when there's a body, it might be more convenient for the deceased to keep them above ground and save all that digging.
After that, we begin to meet the other players in this story, good guys and bad guys. First, a bad guy, Claudio Paolo Manero. No idea, yet, if he's super or just a mundane human villain, but he is definitely smart and ruthless.
It's through Manero that we meet the next player, Lynn. Lynn is cursed to die in the place of others who're about to be murdered. The Eternal Victim. It's an interesting concept and is one of the distinctly Nordic elements to the story that's developing. A power that saves lives, but is bound to make the bearer miserable, at best, or insane, at worst, could only come from a tradition where the chief god was known for betraying his favorites at crucial moments in battle.
There's a mystery surrounding Lynn. Somehow, for 40 years or so, the Victim had managed to escape her fate, but her destiny is somehow reasserted by the machinations of Munin, one of Odin's ravens, what takes human form to magically activate Lynn's curse.
Munin seems to like the shadows and mood lighting.
To help Lynn, by teaching her to possibly change her destiny, The One Who Knows introduces her to another superhuman. Jenny Everywhere is a world- or dimension-shifter. She exists in every possible reality, so she gets around quite a bit. She seems to enjoy her powers, which is more than can be said for most of the other super-powered characters we've met thus far.
Another of the area's supers is the magical musician called the Nordstadt-Barde. His powers haven't been explained in detail, yet, but he was able to conjure Marc's mouth away to keep him from utter his real name.
Lastly, the One Who Knows takes Marc and Lynn to the Master for training. The Master is a martial arts... master. He's taken on the job of teaching Marc to fight, while Marc learns to use his powers.
I'm recommending this strip because I enjoy it and because it's one of those things that I can't wait to see where it's going. Plus, the English translations are, sometimes, amusing. I hope he never changes that aspect. I hope you'll check it out and let them know what you think.
The link to the Union of Heroes is: http://www.unionofheroes.com
As always, you can find me Mondays and Fridays expanding my future history at: www.adastracomic.com
www.heroblog.com
Copyright © 2009 Joe Singleton
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