Living Legends 25 Notes

I am going to remain mostly mum for this one. But we do finally meet the villains of our first volume in the flesh and I think I should go in to more detail on the members of the Cabal.

Dominique is, of course, the Sorceress of Zoom, an adventure of whom can be found on Tales of the Living Legends. A villain turned Nazi fighting anti-hero, she seemed perfect for the story.

American Crusader has popped up repeatedly over the course of the series, and we can clearly see here that his goals go well beyond just apprehending Atoman. His motivations still remain vague however.

Manowar (or Man Of War) in his original incarnation was a warrior literally created by Mars to fight during World War II.

The Face makes his first appearance in Living Legends here. Reporter Anthony Trent hated crime and donned a fright mask to fight against it. We will quickly learn over the course of this and the next chapter that it is far more than a simple mask. In a team of corrupted heroes, he is clearly the worst. He revels in causing pain and misery now.

And Lash Lightning’s true intentions finally come clear.

Next month, we hit our big climax as the heroes and the Cabal finally face off once and for all!

Living Legends 23 Notes

We close out Living Legends for the year with the second part of our Christmas stories.

Big clue as to the identity of Dominique, one you might have already connected if you have been reading Tales of the Living Legends, our webcomic companion.

While working through a lot of the Golden Age comics I have downloaded (thumbs up to public domain download site Golden Age Comics), I stumbled across a second Captain Fearless, this one a powerless sea captain. I instantly realized even without his powers, Ernesto didn’t need to be retired. So watch for him to return to action in a subsequent chapter.

A little bit of fun with Ghost Woman and Green Lama. I have been digging through old Green Lama stories in the last few months, and the one thing that seems perfectly clear to me is that he may be one of the biggest dicks in Golden Age comics. Don’t get me wrong, he is still definitely a hero, but I do not really see the calm, collected Buddhist monk of his other modern interpretations. I have mellowed him a little (decades stuck in the Abyss Sphere would do that to any man), but I want to keep some of that spunk. This chapter really shows that.

Welcome to Christmas baby Gabriel Blake. The poor kid is going to have a hard life right from the start. We will get to that very soon, as we will come at you twice again next month.

Living Legends 22 Notes

With this chapter and the next we take a look at Christmas time for all of our heroes. This is very much a connecting chapter as we start the build to the secrets of Dominique and her cabal.

I will let this one speak for itself for the most part. But I will say that the mystery of Luna still has some time before it is revealed. She holds the key to the next major story arc of Living Legends and a major shift in the series post-Dominique.

More in future posts.

Living Legends 19 Notes

This is it: the chapter we finally see what happened to the heroes trapped in the abyss sphere.

Ghost Woman’s powers and identity get taken to a new level as we realize she is far more than we ever expected from her previous appearances. Her identity crisis and alter egos will become a major part of Living Legends in the months to come.

Blackout gets his own cure as the abyss sphere somehow remedies his loss of intelligence. The mute Blackout will also get to do more than act like an animal upon his return to the real world.

Hey, remember when Marcus Bennett was another spy for Dominique? No? Well, he is, the no good dirty rat! But now Doctor Frost is beginning to get the clues he needs to finally figure out the mystery behind Dominique and her allies. I think Frost has really started to gain a voice with this issue, even if that voice is Jack Bauer.

And it all comes down to the Green Lama. I’ve waited eighteen issues to finally introduce one of my favorite Golden Age characters to the story of Living Legends. Originally, I planned to make Lama one of the initial Legends, but as I worked my way through the characters I realized he could be far too powerful among the initial eighteen. We wouldn’t want him to show up Atoman, nor did I want to make a second hero in trouble with the government. So Lama got pushed back. But Jethro Dumont is finally here, and he is here to stay.

Next month, it is back to the characters in the real world as we begin the progression in to the next stage of the mystery of the time-jump.