The Iron Age of Comics: Jim Shooter's Return to Marvel

[eldandythedoubter]

Mega Man and the series' jump to the Saturn (will cover Mega Man 7, 8, and X3.)

Well, my one question is this: will the next two classic games have a playable roll and blues?

 

[nick_crenshaw82]

I'm going to be rereading the Supreme collections soon to mine some ideas.

- Alan Moore's "Big Bang."

With no Image Comics ITTL where does Gary Carlson take Big Bang Comics in 1996, Malibu Comics or does he stay at Caliber Comics?

 

[Pyro]

Well, my one question is this: will the next two classic games have a playable roll and blues?

Maybe...

I can confirm that X3 will have the first female boss.

 

[nick_crenshaw82]

Just something to think about.

 

[nick_crenshaw82]

Supreme - Ultiman
Darius Dax - Doctor Cortex
Diana Dane - Lori Lake
Suprema - Ultra Girl
Judy Jordan (Lana Lang)
Citadel Supreme (Fortress of Solitude)
Televillain
Shadow Supreme (Negative Superman?)
Allied Supermen of America - Knights of Justice/Round Table of America
League of Infinity - Pantheon of Heroes
Professor Night - Knight Watchman
Glory - Venus
Doc Rocket - Blitz
Roy Roman - Human/Atomic Sub
Storybook Smith (Johnny Thunder)
Black Hand - Beacon
Waxman (Sandman)
Jack -O-Lantern - Dr. Weird
Super-Patriot
Alley Cat - Bluebird
Mighty Man - Mighty Man
Billy Friday (Jimmy Olsen)
Korgo the Space Tyrant
Jack-A-Dandy - Pink Flamigo
Twilight - Kid Galahad
Spacehunter - Mister Martian
Diehard - Mister US
Janet Planet - Jon Cosmos
Fisherman - Robo Hood
Stormbirds - Flying Aces
Conquerors of the Uncanny (Challengers of the Unknown)
Jungle Jack Flynn (Congo Bill)
Polyman - Protoplasman
Mark Tyme, Dimensioneer (Rip Hunter)
Emerpus - Reverso
Szazs - Mr. Mixitup
Magno (Amazo)
Lucas Tate (Perry White)
Jim Stormbird - Blackjack
Blake Baron (Dr. Occult)
Supremium - Ultranium

 

[Miss Teri]

I really hope the "New Jack City" story is maintained.

 

[Pyro]

Capcom’s Mega Man franchise had been riding high as of 1996. The animated series had been a ratings success in both the United States and its native Japan while Mega Man X and X2 sold extremely well. As such, fans had high expectations for Mega Man 7, which marked the original series’ jump to the Super Nintendo. Capcom rushed the game’s development into a three month time frame that force the company to draft Minakuchi Engineering [1] to assist in completing it on time. However, series producer Keiji Inafune publicly stated that the team was still highly motivated despite the crunch.

Mega Man 7 released in Japan on March 24, 1995 with the game released in North America in September. The plot directly followed the ending of Mega Man 6 with the Blue Bomber arresting the nefarious Dr. Wily who went to prison for his crimes. Wily lived up to his name by plotting the contingency plan that activated a new series of Robot Masters programmed to free his. Adding to the intrigue were mysterious new robots Forte and Gospel, who appears to also oppose Dr. Wily.

The two most notable Robot Masters in the game were Chain Man and Torch Man [2]. Chain Man took some aesthetic cues from George Miller’s Mad Max series with the robot master being the leader of a group of robot raiders roaming the deserts. His Chain Grapple weapon with limited range, but can extend farther with charging. It is most effective on the vampire-inspired Shade Man as something a cheeky nod to Konami’s Castlevania series, meanwhile, Slash Man’s Slash Claw is the most effective weapon to use against him.

Torch Man shares little in common with his counterpart from the little-known Mega Man 3 for the PC and (ironically) acted as a forest management robot for controlled burns before Wily captured and reprogrammed him. He is usually the first of the second set of Robot Masters players go after as Freeze Man’s Frozen Lance is his weakness [3]. His Blazing Torch weapon is useful in Slash Man’s stage where it can reveal a path to unlocking Beat.

Though they were minor cameos, Astro Man and Gale Man [4] from the animated series appeared in the backgrounds of Torch Man and Cloud Man’s stages. However, these world be portents of their “promotions” to bosses in Mega Man 8.

(Astro Man's cameo from OTL Mega Man 7. Source.)​

Reviews of Mega Man 7 were ultimately lukewarm with most critics feeling it to be a rehash of previous games and generally agreed that the X series was superior. Fans still held a favorable opinion of the game with Bass attaining a measure of popularity as Mega Man’s rival. However, Capcom soon found itself at a crossroads. They had originally planned on Mega Man X3 to be series’ swan song on the aging SNES, but found the expense of adding the C4 chip undesirable. Better-than-expected sales of Street Fighter and DC Superheroes on the Saturn convinced them to shift its development to Sega and Sony’s 32-bit console.

Many inside the gaming press and fandom saw it as a coup. However, working with the more advanced hardware and added development time gave Capcom more room to development certain ideas. Most notable of these was making fan-favorite character, Zero, completely playable via a tag team option. While more powerful than X from the outset, Zero is unable to utilize certain power-ups like the Light upgrades and heart tanks. With the difficulty spike in the later levels and Zero’s low defense compared to a fully armored X, the character turns into a glass cannon.

X3 was also trailblazing in that included the first female boss in the first series with Hurricane Swallow, who strongly resembled from Chun-Li from the Street Fighter series. Her weapon Gale Sweep is most effective against Pyro Fox [4] though Gravity Beetle’s Gravity Well will ground her. Another new addition was the extensive use of animated the cut scenes using the voice talents of Tony Oliver and Cam Clarke reprising their roles as X and Zero from the animated series.

The plot involved a branching storyline that involved Dr. Doppler infected by the Maverick Virus in his attempts to find a cure. He builds his fortress inside a volcano where he plans to create a volcanic winter that will eradicate humankind. Opposing the Maverick Hunters are Bit and Byte, his Nightmare Police that will challenge X and Zero depending on how many Mavericks they defeat. However, the storyline branches off by “sacrificing” Zero in Doppler Stage 2 who is injuired fighting a mini-boss and hands his saber to X in a cut scene. While the game makes various allusions to Sigma, the game subverts player expectations by having Doppler flee after the initial confrontation with X to fight him in his second form.

If the player chooses not to sacrifice Zero, the game ends with Doppler’s fortress collapsing in on itself while X and Zero look on. There is a vague implication that the two are destined to fight each other, though the never elaborates on this. While this ending is still canon, Sigma will appear in a post-credits cut scene where he awakens in the buried remains of Doppler’s fortress if the player sacrifices Zero—foreshadowing Mega Man X4.

Mega Man X3 released in both Japan and North America on November 1996 to generally favorable reviews. Most reviewers raved about the presentation and agreed with fans that playing as Zero added a greater challenge in the later levels. While it didn’t sell as well as Sonic the Hedgehog 4, it did convince many fans of the series to jump to the Saturn. If that didn’t convince them to switch their allegiance, the announcement of Mega Man 8 for the Blue Bomber’s tenth anniversary would.

[1] Who developed the Mega Man games on the Gameboy as well was the Wily Wars on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Their involvement was never confirmed OTL, but it is TTL.

[2] Replacing Spring Man and Turbo Man, respectively.

[3] Similar to OTL’s Freeze Cracker except it fires in only one direction, but still breaks into five smaller icicles when it hits a wall.

[4] OTL’s Tengu Man. The translators working on the animated series believed that American audiences would not be familiar with Japanese folklore and thus changed the name.

[5] An OC I made years ago that I decided to put into TTL’s version of the game. Hurricane Swallow and Pyro Fox replace Crush Crawfish and Volt Catfish from OTL. The weakness chain is as follows:

Hurricane Swallow > Pyro Fox > Blast Hornet > Blizzard Buffalo > Toxic Seahorse > Tunnel Rhino > Neon Tiger > Gravity Beetle

 

[Pyro]

Alan Moore had spent most of the three years following Malibu’s 1963 out of the mainstream spotlight. He had already severed ties with Marvel and DC by the late eighties and while he was on cordial terms with Malibu Comics, having even contributed to their licensed Star Trek comics post-1963, he expressed reservations working for the Walt Disney Company after it had acquired the company. He returned to the independent scene where he possessed total creative control of his work as well as the rights. It had appeared that he had finally washed his hands of superheroes until he received some correspondence from Gary Carlson.

Carlson himself had gained a considerable reputation as an independent publisher as his magazine, Megaton, had introduced many new talents such as Erik Larsen and Rob Liefeld [1] in the late eighties. In 1993, Carlson had introduced the Knight Watchman in Caliber Comics’s Berserker #1 who was a part of a larger universe called Big Bang Comics. Drawing inspiration from DC Comics’s Golden and Silver Ages, the main conceit of Big Bang was that is had acted as an established universe with decades of history though its actual publication history had been a five-issue limited series from Caliber in 1994.

Feeling that he could do more with the concept, Carlson solicited Alan Moore’s talents by mailing the mini-series to Moore in the UK and asking if would be interested in writing for it. “I had honestly expected Alan to say ‘no’,” Carlson would later admit in a 1998 interview with Comic Book Resources, “He was such a giant in the industry and I was a non-entity in comparison that there was a part of me that believed that I wasn’t worth his time.”

However, the idea intrigued Moore. He had spent his early career deconstructing the concept of the superhero in Marvelman [2] and Watchmen and felt that he had contributed to the rise of the medium’s brief--but influential--“grim and gritty” phase where vigilantes grew darker due the popularity of Rorschach. If 1963 was a pastiche of Marvel Comics of the sixties, then Moore would bring back the “magic” of DC’s Silver Age under Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz through a more contemporary lens.

Hi-Octane Comics, starring Ulti-Man #500 would debut in June of 1996 with a Jerry Ordway cover that evoked that iconic cover of 1939’s Superman #1 with relative newcomer Steve Skroce pencilling the interiors. Carlson and Moore chose to start the series with that number to give it the illusion of having existed for decades. Similarly, the issue was peppered with “editor’s notes” referring to nonexistent stories from previous issues.

The issue begins with the titular character returning to Earth after a decades-long mission to find the planet in flux between states. Confused, he learns that the cities and people look like a double-exposed photograph though he is at a loss to explain. Several versions of him (including a funny animal, Ulti-mouse, and the original Ulti-Man from the Golden Age) confront him and after a brief tussle, take him to an another dimension called “Ultropolis” where he learns he is the newest incarnation.

It is there where he received an audience with the Silver Age Ulti-Man of “Earth-A” both he and his Golden Age (Earth-B) counterpart relate their origins. Both received their powers from cosmic radiation emitted by a meteorite, albeit under different circumstances. Earth-B Ulti-Man was a 4-F reject [3] who received his powers after the meteorite struck his car whereas Earth-A Ulti-Man was a Gemini astronaut who received his powers from an accident. Both reveal that reality is constantly revising itself; older and alternate versions of Ulti-Men find themselves “exiled” to his limbo dimension with their supporting casts after each revision.

While his Golden and Silver Age counterparts offer the current (Earth-C) Ulti-Man a place in Ultropolis, he declines and decides to face a future, “full of possibility and peril.” Upon walking through the gate back to Earth where he finds himself in the offices of Dazzle Comics where he meets editor Lucas Tate and writer of Warrior Woman, Lori Lake. He reaches for his wallet to learn that he is “Chris Kelly Jr.” of Empire City and then returns home to a photograph of him with his adoptive parents.

Hi-Octane #501 picks up where the last issue left off, but now includes art from Rick Veitch for the flashbacks done in the style of Silver Age artists like Curt Swan and Al Plastino. Chris Kelly returns to his old home of Littlehaven, Iowa to put the pieces of his past together. He then encounters his first love, Judy Jordan, who aged into hero golden years while he remained in his physical prime throughout the decades. He quickly remembers that he gained his powers as a toddler in the 1920s through exposure to a radioactive “Ultranium” meteorite and had a career as Ulti-Mite and Ulti-Boy—a nod to his Silver Age career.

Unfortunately, Chris notices that the world around him has become darker and cynical. He asks Judy if there were any other heroes. She regretfully tells him that they vanished shortly after Ulti-Man left for the stars and that society moved on without them. There hadn’t been that many threats to the world since Cortex succumbed to cancer and Optilux committed suicide.

The six months of Ulti-Man largely dedicated itself to building up the history of character and key aspects of his mythology. One such example was his membership in the Pantheon of Heroes, a nod to the Legion of Super-Heroes, as Ulti-Boy shown in the second issue. Hi-Octane #502 introduced Ulti-Man’s Cloud Fortress and #503 devolved deeper into the nature of Ultranium, both the source of his powers and his “Kryptonite.” This issue would serve as the informal introduction of Katlyn Kelly, Chris’s adoptive sister whose encounter with the Ultranium Man transformed her as well.

Moore’s work on Hi-Octane would serve as commentary on the industry and its history as well. Billy Friday, a rough analogue of Jimmy Olsen, who is Chris’s writer on the fictional Omniman comic and a parody of Moore during the eighties. Friday’s postmodernist outlook and tendency to deconstruct and degrade Omniman and his cast, such as resurrecting the character as a Hezbollah extremist and having the city of Poseidonis succumb to mercury poisoning.

Another notable example was “The Last Case of the Knights of Justice” where he reconnects to Venus and other members from the old WWII team that included the original Blitz and Beacon. They recalled their last adventure on New Years Eve of 1949 where a trio of spooks inspired by EC Comics’s Cryptkeeper and company took them to scenarios inspired by Tales from the Crypt and Mad where their powers were useless against society’s ills. The demoralized team disbanded on the stroke of midnight.

Moore finished off 1996 with the proper introductions of Ultra Girl and Sirius the Ulti-Hound in Hi-Octane #506. Both were pastiches of the original Silver Age Supergirl and Krypto the Superdog who were captives of Gorrl the Living Galaxy. While Ulti-Man had more or less acclimated to the then-contemporary American cultured of the 1990s, Ultra Girl’s morals were firmly rooted in the 1950s with an outlook that wouldn’t have out of place in shows like The Waltons, but appeared puritanical in post-Sexual Revolution America.

The first six issues of Hi-Octane Comics were a sleeper hit for Caliber Comics, who didn’t have the marketing budget of the Big Three nor was it a force in Hollywood aside from James O’Barr’s The Crow and its 1996 sequel. However, it did get a considerable push in Wizard magazine, whose writing staff gave it overwhelmingly positive reviews. Indeed sales did pick up enough that there was talk of spinoffs starring Knight Watchman from Berserk or characters introduced in the original mini-series behind the scenes. Nothing would begin materialize until later 1997 as the story Moore set in motion in these first six issues began to pick up steam.

[1] Flash Fact: Larsen’s Savage Dragon and Liefeld’s Youngblood first appeared in Megaton OTL.

[2] Miracleman in the United States for obvious reasons.

[3] Similar to Captain America.

 

[JonClark]

Maybe Moore could introduce his ABC comics at Caliber as opposed to the non-existent Wildstorm. Caliber might become a place for other non-Big Two superheroes and pastiches like Astro City.

 

[Ogrebear]

I like the sound of these Hi-Octane comics. I suspect ITTL me would have brought them as the artists are good, and it sounds like the plots are really good.

Hopefully Caliber can get a UK company (Rebellion/Fleetway?) to distribute them, as would make European growth easier.

I wonder what happens to Ellis ITTL?

 

[nick_crenshaw82]

If 1963 was a pastiche of Marvel Comics of the sixties, then Moore would bring back the “magic” of DC’s Silver Age under Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz true a more contemporary lens.

Do you mean through?

Hi-Octane Comics, starring Ulti-Man #500

Is Caliber Comics transforming Big Bang Comics into an imprint?

James O’Barr’s The Crow

Does Brandon Lee survive the film?

 

[Miss Teri]

Turning Ulti-Man into Supreme. Wonderful idea!

 

[MegaToon1234]

Capcom’s Mega Man franchise had been riding high as of 1996. The animated series had been a ratings success in both the United States and its native Japan while Mega Man X and X2 sold extremely well. As such, fans had high expectations for Mega Man 7, which marked the original series’ jump to the Super Nintendo. Capcom rushed the game’s development into a three month time frame that force the company to draft Minakuchi Engineering [1] to assist in completing it on time. However, series producer Keiji Inafune publicly stated that the team was still highly motivated despite the crunch.

Mega Man 7 released in Japan on March 24, 1995 with the game released in North America in September. The plot directly followed the ending of Mega Man 6 with the Blue Bomber arresting the nefarious Dr. Wily who went to prison for his crimes. Wily lived up to his name by plotting the contingency plan that activated a new series of Robot Masters programmed to free his. Adding to the intrigue were mysterious new robots Forte and Gospel, who appears to also oppose Dr. Wily.

The two most notable Robot Masters in the game were Chain Man and Torch Man [2]. Chain Man took some aesthetic cues from George Miller’s Mad Max series with the robot master being the leader of a group of robot raiders roaming the deserts. His Chain Grapple weapon with limited range, but can extend farther with charging. It is most effective on the vampire-inspired Shade Man as something a cheeky nod to Konami’s Castlevania series, meanwhile, Slash Man’s Slash Claw is the most effective weapon to use against him.

Torch Man shares little in common with his counterpart from the little-known Mega Man 3 for the PC and (ironically) acted as a forest management robot for controlled burns before Wily captured and reprogrammed him. He is usually the first of the second set of Robot Masters players go after as Freeze Man’s Frozen Lance is his weakness [3]. His Blazing Torch weapon is useful in Slash Man’s stage where it can reveal a path to unlocking Beat.

Though they were minor cameos, Astro Man and Gale Man [4] from the animated series appeared in the backgrounds of Torch Man and Cloud Man’s stages. However, these world be portents of their “promotions” to bosses in Mega Man 8.

View attachment 650796View attachment 650796
(Astro Man's cameo from OTL Mega Man 7. Source.)​

Reviews of Mega Man 7 were ultimately lukewarm with most critics feeling it to be a rehash of previous games and generally agreed that the X series was superior. Fans still held a favorable opinion of the game with Bass attaining a measure of popularity as Mega Man’s rival. However, Capcom soon found itself at a crossroads. They had originally planned on Mega Man X3 to be series’ swan song on the aging SNES, but found the expense of adding the C4 chip undesirable. Better-than-expected sales of Street Fighter and DC Superheroes on the Saturn convinced them to shift its development to Sega and Sony’s 32-bit console.

Many inside the gaming press and fandom saw it as a coup. However, working with the more advanced hardware and added development time gave Capcom more room to development certain ideas. Most notable of these was making fan-favorite character, Zero, completely playable via a tag team option. While more powerful than X from the outset, Zero is unable to utilize certain power-ups like the Light upgrades and heart tanks. With the difficulty spike in the later levels and Zero’s low defense compared to a fully armored X, the character turns into a glass cannon.

X3 was also trailblazing in that included the first female boss in the first series with Hurricane Swallow, who strongly resembled from Chun-Li from the Street Fighter series. Her weapon Gale Sweep is most effective against Pyro Fox [4] though Gravity Beetle’s Gravity Well will ground her. Another new addition was the extensive use of animated the cut scenes using the voice talents of Tony Oliver and Cam Clarke reprising their roles as X and Zero from the animated series.

The plot involved a branching storyline that involved Dr. Doppler infected by the Maverick Virus in his attempts to find a cure. He builds his fortress inside a volcano where he plans to create a volcanic winter that will eradicate humankind. Opposing the Maverick Hunters are Bit and Byte, his Nightmare Police that will challenge X and Zero depending on how many Mavericks they defeat. However, the storyline branches off by “sacrificing” Zero in Doppler Stage 2 who is injuired fighting a mini-boss and hands his saber to X in a cut scene. While the game makes various allusions to Sigma, the game subverts player expectations by having Doppler flee after the initial confrontation with X to fight him in his second form.

If the player chooses not to sacrifice Zero, the game ends with Doppler’s fortress collapsing in on itself while X and Zero look on. There is a vague implication that the two are destined to fight each other, though the never elaborates on this. While this ending is still canon, Sigma will appear in a post-credits cut scene where he awakens in the buried remains of Doppler’s fortress if the player sacrifices Zero—foreshadowing Mega Man X4.

Mega Man X3 released in both Japan and North America on November 1996 to generally favorable reviews. Most reviewers raved about the presentation and agreed with fans that playing as Zero added a greater challenge in the later levels. While it didn’t sell as well as Sonic the Hedgehog 4, it did convince many fans of the series to jump to the Saturn. If that didn’t convince them to switch their allegiance, the announcement of Mega Man 8 for the Blue Bomber’s tenth anniversary would.

[1] Who developed the Mega Man games on the Gameboy as well was the Wily Wars on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Their involvement was never confirmed OTL, but it is TTL.

[2] Replacing Spring Man and Turbo Man, respectively.

[3] Similar to OTL’s Freeze Cracker except it fires in only one direction, but still breaks into five smaller icicles when it hits a wall.

[4] OTL’s Tengu Man. The translators working on the animated series believed that American audiences would not be familiar with Japanese folklore and thus changed the name.

[5] An OC I made years ago that I decided to put into TTL’s version of the game. Hurricane Swallow and Pyro Fox replace Crush Crawfish and Volt Catfish from OTL. The weakness chain is as follows:

Hurricane Swallow > Pyro Fox > Blast Hornet > Blizzard Buffalo > Toxic Seahorse > Tunnel Rhino > Neon Tiger > Gravity Beetle

Ok, about the Mega Man section, I have some questions.

1. Is the Torch Man in TTL's Mega Man 7 the same Torch Man from OTL's Mega Man 11?
2. When did Astro Man and Gale Man appear in the Mega Man animated series?
3. What do Hurricane Swallow and Pyro Fox look like?

 

[Pyro]

Maybe Moore could introduce his ABC comics at Caliber as opposed to the non-existent Wildstorm. Caliber might become a place for other non-Big Two superheroes and pastiches like Astro City.

He just might. As for Astro City, I haven't covered it yet, but it's possible that Kurt Buisek is publishing it under Epic.

Hopefully Caliber can get a UK company (Rebellion/Fleetway?) to distribute them, as would make European growth easier.

Now there's an idea. Hm...

I wonder what happens to Ellis ITTL?

Haven't decided, but I'm afraid he's likely to behave the same way he did around female fans.

Is Caliber Comics transforming Big Bang Comics into an imprint?

To say any more would be telling, but there will be an expansion of the line come 1997.

Does Brandon Lee survive the film?

He does.

1. Is the Torch Man in TTL's Mega Man 7 the same Torch Man from OTL's Mega Man 11?

Similar enough in design and function.

1. When did Astro Man and Gale Man appear in the Mega Man animated series?

In the second season along with some of the Mega Man 7 Robot Masters.

1. What do Hurricane Swallow and Pyro Fox look like?

Hurricane Swallow looks somewhat like a robotic Wave the Swallow from OTL Sonic Riders with clear visual influences from Chun-Li. Her "pig tails" even turn into rotor blades when she uses her Gale Sweep attack, which is based on the Spinning Bird Kick. Gale Sweep is vaguely similar to the Top Spin from Mega Man 3 when charged. X bursts across the screen surrounded by a tornado in an invincible charging attack. However, the tornado carries forward if X comes to an abrupt halt.

Pyro Fox is smaller that Flame Stag from Mega Man X2 with his most prominent feature being the torch at the end of his tail. He is based on the kitsune from Japanese folklore and his stage is a forest shrine populated by robots based on various yokai. He is more philosophical than other Maverick in that he believes that humanity is harmful to the Earth and that they must be eliminated to save the planet from destruction. His Ghost Fire attack is similar to the Power Stone from Mega Man 5 in that is a series of fireballs that spiral across the screen and it most effective at close range. Charging the weapon increases the size of said fireballs.

 

[Igeo654]

Haven't decided, but I'm afraid he's likely to behave the same way he did around female fans.

In my mind, Ellis is still one of the best writers ever in comics and I wish him all the best in the future in spite of everything. As for this TL, The Authority could and should go to Caliber, IMO. There, the 2nd half of the run with Garth Ennis could be avoided altogether, preventing the team and their book from becoming dated. Ennis is a great writer, no offence to the guy, but he has, sadly, made his contempt and dislike for the superhero genre very clear in his works. Ellis, from his writing, clearly wanted to make something new and genre-changing, but not a full-blown deconstruction.

 

[MegaToon1234]

Similar enough in design and function.

Sounds believable.

In the second season along with some of the Mega Man 7 Robot Masters.

Understandable, but what episode?

Hurricane Swallow looks somewhat like a robotic Wave the Swallow from OTL Sonic Riders with clear visual influences from Chun-Li. Her "pig tails" even turn into rotor blades when she uses her Gale Sweep attack, which is based on the Spinning Bird Kick. Gale Sweep is vaguely similar to the Top Spin from Mega Man 3 when charged. X bursts across the screen surrounded by a tornado in an invincible charging attack. However, the tornado carries forward if X comes to an abrupt halt.

Pyro Fox is smaller that Flame Stag from Mega Man X2 with his most prominent feature being the torch at the end of his tail. He is based on the kitsune from Japanese folklore and his stage is a forest shrine populated by robots based on various yokai. He is more philosophical than other Maverick in that he believes that humanity is harmful to the Earth and that they must be eliminated to save the planet from destruction. His Ghost Fire attack is similar to the Power Stone from Mega Man 5 in that is a series of fireballs that spiral across the screen and it most effective at close range. Charging the weapon increases the size of said fireballs.

Very fascinating.

 

[Pyro]

In my mind, Ellis is still one of the best writers ever in comics and I wish him all the best in the future in spite of everything. As for this TL, The Authority could and should go to Caliber, IMO. There, the 2nd half of the run with Garth Ennis could be avoided altogether, preventing the team and their book from becoming dated. Ennis is a great writer, no offence to the guy, but he has, sadly, made his contempt and dislike for the superhero genre very clear in his works. Ellis, from his writing, clearly wanted to make something new and genre-changing, but not a full-blown deconstruction.

An interesting proposition, but at a loss as to how to execute it because butterflies fluttered Stormwatch away.

Understandable, but what episode?

I didn't write any details episode lists. Sorry. Perhaps I will put it on my to-do list for 1997.

 

[MegaToon1234]

I didn't write any details episode lists. Sorry. Perhaps I will put it on my to-do list for 1997.

Ok.

 

[nick_crenshaw82]

He does.

That means that this could become reality ITTL:

A list of possible roles for Brandon Lee:

10 roles Brandon Lee could have played perfectly.

10 roles Brandon Lee could have played perfectly. Earlier this month I fell down the Brandon Lee rabbit hole after stumbling upon one of hi...

staystillreviews.blogspot.com

 

[unclepatrick]

That means that this could become reality ITTL:

A list of possible roles for Brandon Lee:

10 roles Brandon Lee could have played perfectly.

10 roles Brandon Lee could have played perfectly. Earlier this month I fell down the Brandon Lee rabbit hole after stumbling upon one of hi...

staystillreviews.blogspot.com

The Director and writer of the John Wick Films first met Keanu Reeves on the Matrix films .
They became friends and talked about doing a film together.
That became the first John Wick Film which then lead to two more films in the series.

So if Brandon Lee does the Matrix, it likely that he would have ended up doing The John Wick films .