Hey, its one of mine this week!

Those of you that are old timey Daredevil readers will probably remember TM best as drawn by JRJR back in the day, but Alex Maleev (and cover artist David Mack) sure cooked up a nice contemporary version. Have fun with this one!

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This is MOAB, one of the posthuman defense operatives of Polaris, employed by the company that gave them their abilities: the Posthuman Development Initiative.

Illustrated by: Joao Marques
Origin by: Thom Chiaramonte

:::

MOAB

Name: Fábio Miranda
Affiliation: Polaris

Attributes:

Melee: 20
Reflex: 30
Muscle: 20
Vigor: 50
Acumen: 30
Observation: 20
Will: 20

Life: 120
Influence: 70

Abilities:

Perpetual Energy Generation: MOAB can generate an extremely powerful explosive yield from within his cellular makeup. The energy generation starts at the cellular level and scale, reflected in a microscopic agitation of each cell’s mitochondria, which begin to generate energy at an increasingly, exponentially accelerated rate. The process builds rapidly, until his body begins to struggle containing the energy surge. MOAB has trained extensively in techniques to manage this energy build-up, and has learned to regulate the rate at which he generates the charge. If left unchecked, or by design, he can build up enough energy to reach his body’s terminal limit on containment, at which point the blast is released, causing massive damage at a significant area of effect. Without the aid of technology, there is a finite limit of energy generation after which his cells begin to degrade, injuring or even killing him. However, his containment suit allows his to reprocess the energy and prevent physical damage to his own cellular makeup, allowing him to build even greater levels of energy for discharge, partially absorbed by his suit. He must periodically discharge energy in order to avoid a dangerous build-up, and can do so by releasing it in smaller bursts , into the sky, the ground, or, if at the Polaris compound, into special energy batteries which are designed to absorb his blasts and convert them into usable energy for the facility.

He can generate explosive blasts [40 IV] without the use of his suit, or up to an Intensity Value of 75 if using the suit’s energy absorption and re-distribution technology. Neither he, nor the suit, is damaged by his blasts, under normal conditions. He must release energy blast [5 IV] once every 4 hours to avoid cellular damage, and for every round after the 4 hour mark that he fails to do so, he begins to take additive damage [5 IV] until he releases the energy, or dies. If his Life is reduced to within 20 points of death, he will unwillingly release his energy unless he makes a successful Vigor Action to contain it, which will cause his own death, as a result, in the following round, with a resulting, full-rank energy blast occurring regardless, unless he finds a way to distribute it safely elsewhere.

Example 1: MOAB releases unconsciously-generated energy [5 IV] every 4 hours.

Example 2: MOAB consciously generates energy [up to 40 IV], released in an area effect with his body in the center.

Example 3: MOAB allows his suit to absorb and re-distribute his consciously-generated energy [up to 75 IV] with an area effect range with his body in the center.

Example 4: MOAB refuses to release the unconsciously-generated energy his body creates, for more than 4 hours. For every round, he takes internal damage until he releases the energy. In the first round, he takes damage [5 IV], and generates energy [5 IV], which he contains. In the second round, he takes 2xl damage [12 points], but generates energy [10 IV] which he contains (he is taking more damage than explosive yield being generated.) In the third round, he takes 3x damage [18 points], but generates energy [20 IV] which he contains (he is now generating more energy than damage being internalized, and this ratio increases.) In the fourth round, he takes 4x damage [24 points], but generates energy [30 IV] which he contains. In the fifth round, he takes 5x damage [30 points], but generates energy [40 IV]. In the sixth round, he takes 6x damage [36 points], but generates damage [50 IV]. He has now taken 96 points of damage from internalizing the energy, which is 4 points less than his critical release point. Nonetheless, he only has one round left to act or die. If he releases the energy blast [50 IV], his energy will be depleted, but he will survive. If he does not, and enters a seventh round of containment, the cellular damage will kill him, and energy will be uncontrollably released [75 IV]. Had his Life already been reduced from injury, say by 4 or more points, then at round 6 he would have taken more than 100 cumulative points of damage, forcing his body to release the energy against his will, unless he makes a Vigor Action which, if successful, would only allow him one additional round of life before releasing the energy anyway. The results would be fatal, but would potentially give him fleeting moments to contain, re-distribute or isolate himself to minimize the damage to his environment.

Example 5: MOAB refuses to release his energy, but is wearing his containment suit. He will begin to leak energy into the suit, as a result of the suit’s para-sympathetic connections to his nervous system. As a result, he will only take half damage from energy containment ([3 points] cumulatively tabulated as per the above example) but the suit will absorb the potential energy of his discharge [up to 75 IV]. Beyond this point, the suit will also begin to take damage. If the energy is not released within three additional rounds, the suit will be breached, MOAB will be killed, and the resulting explosion will be unearthly [100 IV].

Flight: MOAB has learned to levitate and fly, with limited range and ability, by generating energy bursts below him [20 IV; 20 RV]. Alone, control of his course and speed are difficult, and he has no physical protection from impact or collision in his normal, if posthuman, physiology, other than the general physical enhancements of the posthuman process. However, his containment suit is heavily armored, and allows Moab to survive even a high-speed collision at the limit of his flight capability. The suit also allows him to increase his flight control and speed through the use of compensation jets and a gyroscopic stabilizer. The optic helm also provides telescopic and targeting aids through an onboard combat computer, offering +1CS to targeted Attacks.

Origin:

Fábio Miranda was the young star student at the Sao Paolo Institute of Culinary Technique, and was recruited by one of the finest hotels in the city, rising in three short years to become the head chef of the well-regarded restaurant and catering business for which the hotel was known. After a fierce bidding war, he was lured to a rival’s enterprise, and found himself supervising over 35 other chefs for the Hotel Do Sol, Brazil’s most highly-regarded luxury resort and restaurant. He was voted Most Eligible Bachelor that year in a nationwide poll, and was a multi-millionaire before his 24th birthday.

Unfortunately, the Do Sol was owned by a powerful arm of the Brazilian mob, and his personal culinary skills were in increasingly in demand, less for supervising the menu for the resort, and more for the whims of the resort’s resident mob boss, Roberto Ortiz. This caused Miranda significant stress, being a religious man who envisioned a very different life for himself. But despite his popularity and personal wealth, he was quickly trapped by the expectations of the powerful underworld don, whose reputation for cruelty and grudge was only matched by the head of the crime family as a whole.

One evening, after personally preparing a feast for Ortiz and twenty-three guests celebrating the birthday of Ortiz’ beautiful lover, the popular actress known only as ‘Liliana’, Miranda left his kitchen to check on the dinner being enjoyed by the party, only to discover the entire room dead. The guests appeared to have been poisoned, and Ortiz himself was lying prone in the corner of the glass-walled penthouse, his cellular phone dialed and connected in his lifeless hand. In shock, Miranda hesitantly picked up the phone, and read the display. The receiving end of the call was, naturally, an unlisted number. But the angry voices shouting into the phone were undoubtedly dangerous. Miranda, realizing his immediate death sentence, fled the penthouse, hiring a car to take him away from Sao Paolo forever, never even returning to his home to gather clothes or cash. He was on the run from the Brazilian mob. He never noticed that Liliana was not among the dead patrons of his fatal dish.

Forgoing his personal fortune, for fear of discovery, he worked his way through Central America, into the United States posing as a migrant worker, and then through he country and into Canada, where he took work at various mining and logging concerns. He paid for everything in cash, made no phone calls, left no trace of his former life. He eventually even began to feel some relief of potentially escaping his fate, until six months after his entry into the country, a black SUV rolled into his small logging town, and several well-dressed mercenary types began questioning the locals at the town pub.

On the run again, and in greater danger than ever, Miranda fell in with several other men of nomadic intent and no identification, serving as short-term hires for security jobs protecting local businessmen from the recent threat of indigenous activist uprisings in the area. On one of these jobs, Miranda heard rumors of scouts making inquiries into his increasingly grey-area world of dubiously-legal employment. First fearing them to be either the authorities, or worse, agents of the Brazilian hitmen on his trail, he planned to abandon his position that night, but was surprised by one of the other mercenaries, by an unplanned introduction to one of these scouts, arranged on his behalf. Hearing their terms, he was guarded, but intrigued. They claimed to be representatives of a clandestine but lucrative organization offering state of the art technological enhancements to applicable candidates interested in becoming posthuman, and representing the Canadian government and friendly interests in the country. Initially assuming them to be lying, and part of one of the Canadian underworld groups, Miranda was nonetheless interested. Even if they were, personal enhancements sounded like a good thing for a man being pursued by more dangerous men at every turn, and the potential to be tangled up with another underworld organization bought him some measure of protection from his former Brazilian masters by default. He accepted, and along with two of his fellow mercenary bodyguards, was taken into the PDI’s new, fully privatized program.

While undergoing psychiatric testing as part of the process, the analysts flagged his evasiveness about certain aspects of his past, and in short order, he was confronted about his true identity and the specter of the incident in Sao Paolo and the men who had been pursuing him. The PDI investigators were considerably thorough. Miranda came clean about his misfortune, swearing innocence of the poisoning for which he was blamed, and expected the worst. However, having tested extremely high for he posthuman process, the decision was made to keep him within the program. He was given a false identity, and a tight paper trail of forged documentation that showed him as a blue collar worker from Northern Europe. He successfully graduated the program and was reborn as MOAB, soon becoming one of the founding members of Polaris, the PDI defense team that protected the facility from intrusions by their former partners in the United States, and their posthuman agents. Though he was never completely certain he had left the concerns of his past behind, MOAB enjoyed a more powerful, confident life as a posthuman than he had for years after his misfortunes in Brazil. He would face questions in the press over the similarity between the design of his armor, and that of the known terrorist Airstrike of Crew Mururoa, but the PDI would never admit to a connection.

:::

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Universe Gallery.

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This piece was done for the R3 Designer Jam, the theme being a challenge to redesign Michael Knight’s famous ‘black T-top’ K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider.

I’m sure I surprised absolutely no one with my choice here. However, i mildly surprised myself by actually fairly successfully drawing a MINI that LOOKS like a MINI. Cars are not my forte. I know it’s black black black (well, not really, but dark dark dark) but that’s the look I was after. Squint! See if you can find the hidden TRDL logo.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This piece was done for the This Week Jam, the character being Robert Kirkman’s Invincible.

Joao’s illustration of Invincible here was EXACTLY what I anticipated. He and i talk quite a bit offline about how influential the style of art on this book is for both of us, and it was no surprise to me that Joao would unleash an Invincible that, in my opinion, rivals the work of the book. The guy is DESTINED to draw that title someday! Plus, bonus points for extreme flight foreshortening that, when I try this pose, makes MINE look like amputees.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This piece was done for the This Week Jam, the character being Marvel’s Mystique.

What a crazy drawing Joao did here. This was timed for my birthday, and that was cool enough… but what really impressed me was that it really looks like me (a few less pizzas, maybe) and it surprised me. I was ecstatic. What a cool idea!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This piece was done for the This Week Jam, the character being Mystique of the X-books.

This was a challenging jam for me, not because I don’t like the character, but because I don’t like the character RIGHT NOW. Currently, as is the case with the X-books across the line, the editorial shift has been to embrace former villains brought into the X-Men’s fold, as a result of the ‘live together, die alone’ mentality post M-Day. I’ve got no problem with that. In fact, what Mike Carey is doing on X-Men has been pretty interesting: Sabertooth is caged like an animal, quarantined for lack of a clear direction of what to DO with him, some X-Men wanting to kill him, others to rehabilitate him, etc. I think that’s good conflict. And used as a weapon when necessary? Sure. But Mystique? She’s suddenly been wandering around the X-Mansion (well, several issues back, in Milligan’s run, anyway) and frankly it just rubs me the wrong way. At least Milligan toyed with SOME sense of reasoning for her to be not only comingling with her often-enemies, but frankly, hanging out without a lot to do and being boring: she wanted, in his script, to manipulate Rogue and Gambit to be apart, as weak as that psychology is. And she was dodgy, too… masquerading as the Fox, a sultry temptation for Gambit, that whole thing. I wasn’t a huge fan, but I got it. Now? She’s on the X-Men, just… I don’t know… following Rogue around. And in the latest issue, making googly eyes at Iceman. I’m just missing how this de-evolution of one of the cooler, more creepy X-villains, is somehow adding to the X-Men canon in a valuable way. That said, i fully admit I wasn’t on-board for that X-Factor run either, so… call me a cranky, ‘back in MY day’ kind of X-men reader. Her classic look, with the white dress deal and skull motif? Super sexy. Just wasn’t feeling it this time around.

ANYWAY, I WAS intrigued by the designs of the character done for the Ultimate X-Men book. I haven’t been reading it, but she seemed fairly militant, so i went in that direction here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Hey y’all… if you haven’t read Invincible, now you have an excuse. This is one of the best new old-school superhero books of the last few years, along with Runaways. Invincible is Marc Grayson, and he’s sort of like a ‘son of superman’ cipher…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invincible_(comic)

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This piece was done for the This Week Jam, the character being Jakita Wagner of Planetary.

I’ve been waiting SO long to draw Jakita Wagner. I had a…um… mature audiences commission underway about two years ago, which languished and remains in semi-permanent turnaround (how’s that for an oxymoron) and she’s been on my to-draw list ever since… when she appeared in our This Week lottery, I was pretty fired up about it. Unfortunately, being head down on another TRDL project, I was unable to contribute in a timely fashion. Here’s my Jakita Wagner, in all her bad-assery. Enjoy!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This is the Akserhiran, the most physically imposing member of the Fingers of Hirabah.

Created by: Thom Chiaramonte

:::

Name: n/a
Affiliation: The Fingers of Hirabah

Attributes:

Melee: 10
Reflex: 10
Muscle: 50
Vigor: 75
Acumen: 05
Observation: 10
Will: 20

Life: 145 + 200 = 345
Influence: 35

Abilities:

Animated Stone Physiology: The Aksehiran is not technically a living being, but rather an animated stone entity granted sentience. His physical form is a densely-packed amalgamation of stone, earth and sand, which constantly shifts and re-combines as he moves. The Aksehiran is self-aware, and does not feel pain. It can cause objects and environments of stone and earth to shift and move at it’s passing, creating paths or barriers as desired. As a result of the durability and ability to retain it’s shape, the Aksehiran can suffer a tremendous amount pf physical damage before the shock of the attacks makes it difficult to recover from them, at which point his physical form collapses, after which it takes several days to slowly reform, consciousness intact.

The Aksehiran’s Life is derived from the physical attributes of the earthen material from which he is derived, adding to the Life he obtains from his attribute scores above. Normally, the combination of rock, stone, earth and clay found in his native region offer a total Life bonus of 200 points. If destroyed and reformed in an urban environment, his body will comprise of various foundation materials, soil, mud, concrete, asphalt and construction infrastructure, depending on the location, giving him a total Life bonus of between 225-275 points.

The Aksehiran also enjoys a latent geo-forming capability, which allows him to telekinetically shift large masses of inorganic material in his environment [50 IV; 50 RV].

Origin:

Mohammed Sair was a candidate in an unnamed, highly classified posthuman development program funded by the Turkish government, which suffered considerable setbacks in it’s effort to produce viable posthuman successes, including fire, earthquake, a political uprising, and industrial sabotage. The result of 9 months of concerted effort, Sair’s body immediately rejected the process, and he was pronounced dead seven minutes later, and considered a failure. Disappointed in the program’s lack of results, the Turkish government immediately disbanded the project and decommissioned the laboratory in which it was conducted, demolishing the structure under the guise of a rebuilding construction effort already underway in the area.

Seventeen days after the structure was gutted and demolished, a figure slowly began forming in the rubble, eventually taking humanoid shape and rising from the earth. When rumors of a stone giant began spreading throughout the neighboring towns, agents of the Fingers of Hirabah reported the event to the group, and Ionisette was dispatched to investigate. She found the creature standing immobile at the demolition site, with a large gathering of peasants and travelers encamped around it. The local police had arrived and were attempting to force the crowd to disperse, insisting the creature, still immobile, was merely a statue, and destroyed it with a few impacts of their Armored Personnel Carrier.

Three days after the locals dispersed and the site was abandoned, Ionisette watched as the figure reformed, and approached it. Her presence triggered something in it’s consciousness, and it began to move, to speak and to interact with her. She invited it to join her, and it stoically agreed, proving itself to be dispassionate and unconcerned about the rules of modern society, and as a result, a valuable member of the Fingers of Hirabah, who rely on it to act as their first line of defense and attack, and to perform tasks that require it’s invulnerability and regeneration. Ionisette named it the Aksehiran, after the ancient city near the location of it’s discovery. The existence of that secret lab was never made public, and as a result, the Fingers of Hirabah do not realize that the Aksehiran’s sentience is a projection of the dying consciousness of young Mohammed Sair, who’s physiological response to the posthuman development process was the lose connection with his original human body, and become tethered to the landscape around him.

:::

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Universe Gallery.

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OK, my R3 Ninja Army, this week, it’s Mystique from the X-Books.

You can do her classic style (in my opinion, the way she SHOULD be in the comics, but hey) or the X-Factor era semi-spy, or the solo-book era super-spy/latex pinup model, or her contemporary version as a member of the X-Men, or the movie version, or what have you!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystique_(comics)

here’s an incomplete but decent costume gallery, mostly highlighting the unfortunate 90s…

http://www.geocities.com/mystiquefiles/main.html

Some images for you as well:

This one is etched in my memory thanks to the Marvel Handbooks… thanks Paul Smith!

This is for Joao, because I always give him shit about his Ramos love.

This isn’t helpful, but it was my favorite Mystique cover.

Atypical for the series

Also unhelpful, this was my favorite Bachalo X-Men cover, period.

Have at it!

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