An interesting batch, as it turns out – I’d be surprised if there are many people who cannot find therein at least two or three characters of use for their campaign. Roll call:

• ART. The new art for this batch is art for recent entries that went without illustrations for a few days due to the pace of the batches:
  • Cartessian
  • Claw the Unconquered
  • Johnny Redbeard I and II
• A new Pre-Crisis Legion of Super-Heroes entry by Chris ! Of course, Animal Lad doesn’t exactly have earth-shuddering star power, but he’s far from alone in that respect on WORG, and it’s a neat entry.
• 1963. From this great retro series of comic, this time we have the key characters from the Fury faux 1960s comic book:
  • The Fury himself, of course, a sort of Spider-Man/Daredevil guy
  • Voidoid, one of the main guys on his imaginary villains gallery
  • Warbeast, the intelligent telepathic mutant killer tyrannosaur who killed the dinosaurs
• A new instalment in the cold war that is writing up the second Black Widow (Natalia Alianovna Romanova). You thought it would never actually come, right ? In this batch you’ll find her entry from the 1980s, starting when the previous writeup ended and ending when she joins the Avengers full time.
• LARSENVERSE. Even more minor and somewhat weird villains from Peter’s research ! Hurray ! Roll call:
  • Bodycount, a literal gunman
  • Chaos and Control, an odd pair of villainous freaks
• Technically, the huge entry for the Gremlin III (son of the Gargoyle, fought Hulk, worked with Rom the Spaceknight and the Soviet Super Soldiers) is a rewrite since there used to be a version on the first generation of our online archives, but since few people alive read the v1… Anyway, he’s a very interesting outcast genius boy, so geeks love him.
• Along with the Gremlin comes his pet, the aptly-named Droog. What could be better than a giant orange mutant triceratops who talks in rhymes and is about as strong as the Hulk ? ‘Nothing”, would say the Gremlin, and that’s why he created Droog to be his pet.
• UPDATES AND REWRITES. In this batch:
  • I’ve added further material to the Black Widow – the KGB years writeup since I realised that I had forgotten to include the semi-recent flashback about the weeks she shared with the Winter Soldier (‘Bucky’ Barnes) during her time with the Red Room. Then I made further clarifications to the History section of the writeup as I realised the previous changes made the chronology confusing. Then I had to add some material to Ivan Petrovitch’s writeup, since the retcons make his role in raising Natalia… complicated. Sigh.
  • Small changes have been made to the Fer-de-Lance writeup, our famous Animals File, and the entry for Bonk (of the Jokerz)
  • Blastaar has been entirely rewritten and now gets a mammoth writeup… FOR POWER IS BLASTAAR !! A quite powerful and entertaining villain, he was worth re-researching. Now all we need is to publicise our initiative for the “Talk Like Blastaar Day”… FOR THE UNMATCHED POWER OF BLASTAAR CAN LEVEL MOUNTAINS WITH BUT A GESTURE !
  • Steeplejack I has been entirely rewritten
  • Steeplejack II has been entirely rewritten, for our mission is to rewrite steeplejacks. Entirely.
• From a classic Belgian adventure comics of the 1970s (people seem to like this stuff) – the Human Ants from the Sixth Continent. *I* think it’s cool.
• BLACK LAGOON. This batch has two entries instead of the usual one:
  • Roberta the maid
  • Rotton the Wizard
• Kirigi, the supernatural giant killer ninja from the classic Daredevil era by Miller, simply had to be on WORG – it is now done. Shi kin hara mitsu dai ko myo, as I always say.
• HEROES. Two more entries for key characters have been deemed finished for now:
  • Hiro Nakamura
  • Peter Petrelli
• Djinn, a PC from Kal El’s Global Guardians campaign
• Her come the rest of the Jokerz street gang, as written up by Tom and found in the Batman Beyond animation series. Now you’ve got the full set, with:
  • Chucko
  • The Dee Dee twins (twinz ?)
  • Woof
• Starblaze, a PC from Kal El’s Patrulla Barna campaign

Current number of entries is 3698. Maybe I should have done two more !

More random stuff. As it turns out, there is a high proportion of characters that strike me as being useful in many many campaigns for GMs. In other terms, a bunch of obscure villains you can use pretty much anywhere, and of characters who come with a built-in adventure scenario.

Also, there is a ton of new art. Wasn’t easy.

Roll call:

• ART. New art (both banner art and/or column art) for the following guys ; also see the updates and rewrites, since those always come with new art.
  • Inque (from Batman Beyond)
  • Garbo
  • Hawkeye (again)
  • Loki
  • Mace (Larsenverse – the former Young Tough)
  • Mack the Knife
  • Punisher II (Frank Castle)
  • Rick Jones
  • Scarlet Witch
  • Silver Surfer
  • Stupor
  • War Machine
  • Daredevil
  • Doctor Octopus
  • Green Goblin I (Normal Osborne)
  • Human Torch II (Johnny Storm)
  • Lizard
  • Marvel Boy VI
  • Mysterio I
  • Rhino
  • Spider-Man
  • The Thing (Ben’s Classic and Modern writeups)
  • Venom I
  • Vulture I
  • Blade (movie version)
  • Bullseye
  • Captain Marvel (DC’s mightiest mortal)
  • Catwoman
  • Captain Marvel Jr. (CM3)
  • Cosmic Boy (pre-Crisis entry)
  • Deathlok III
  • Doctor Strange
  • Frog-Man II (sorry)
  • Ghost Rider I (current)
  • Ant-Man I / Giant-Man I (early)
  • Green Arrow (Oliver Queen)
  • Grifter
  • Hawkman (Kingdom Come version)
  • Hyperion
  • Iron Man (grey/golden armour)
  • Johnny Thunder I
  • Joker (Tangent continuity)
  • Martian Manhunter
  • Motorhead
  • Shang-Chi
  • Starman VII
  • Supergirl (1980s)
  • Superwoman (Wells)
  • John Law (formerly the Tarantula II)
  • Thunderbolt (Peter Cannon)
  • Ultra-Boy (post-reboot entry)
  • USAgent
  • The Vortex
• Here come all the Marvel characters named Atom-Smasher – Atom-Smasher I is an obscure 1970s opponent of the Black Goliath, Atom-Smasher II is his brother and had henchmen with Robotron mechas (yay !), and Atom-Smasher III is an unrelated but powerful anti-nuclear activist and terrorist from the 1990s.
• It’s been a long time since the last one – so here comes Cartessian, another character generated to test Kal El el Vigilante’s random character generator
• One Black Lagoon writeup by Tom per batch is apparently the standard ; this time it’s deadly yakuza swordsman Ginji Matsuzaki.
• Some batches also have one weird 1940s character – this one is Terdu, perhaps best known (well, relatively speaking) for being the boss of the very first Masters of Evil in what will become the Marvel Universe
• LARSENVERSE. Continuing Peter’s arc, this time we got :
  • Arachnid – a minor villain
  • Johnny Redbeard I and II – empowerers of minor villains !
  • Rudehead who is (you’ll never guess !) a minor villain
• As you may have noticed we like old, oddball characters so here comes Peter’s article on one of those half-forgotten comic book barbarian warriors from an improbable heroic-fantasy world – Claw the Unconquered.
• Doctor Stein is part of our Rockworld series of home-made characters based on song titles and lyrics.
• John Coffey is part of Pufnstuff’s work on the Stephen King Universe ; he’s of course from The Green Mile.
• UPDATES AND REWRITES. We’re still making the old and poor-quality stuff on WORG better – we’ve been at it for more than 12 years and some of the earliest material cannot match our current standards.
  • The recent White Tiger (Del Toro) entry, which the author felt was confusing in places, has been clarified by Roy.
  • Bushwacker has received a very thorough and extensive rewriting. This complex villain is a former priest, a former CIA agent, a hitman, a seducer, an homicidal maniac… and he’s also a living gun. But he can also be used as just another street-level thug, though it’s a waste, IMO.
  • Cottonmouth II, of the Serpent Society, is a much simpler villain but he has nevertheless been entirely redone since the old entry was unremarkable at best.
  • All of the members of the second S.H.I.E.L.D. Super-Agents (the ones from the 1990s) have been rewritten in a more accurate and engaging fashion ; this means:
    • Psi-Borg II
    • Violence
    • Knockabout
    • The last member, Ivory, is also there (though it’s a brand-new entry and not a rewrite), completing the team
• Completing our existing Battlestar Galactica (the newer series) material by Mike, here comes the entry for generic Cylon centurions
• It has been a very long time since we’ve written something from the nigh-forgotten Milestone Universe (we like it, but who else even remembers about it ?) – so here comes very minor but tactically interesting villain Reprise. He’s everywhere !
• Saboteur, a very minor but fairly useful Marvel Universe industrial… well, saboteur.
• Vulcan III, a semi-weird 1970s Marvel villain, also from the Black Goliath series, who can be easily expanded upon if you are looking for a baddie to personalise for your campaign
• PLANET DC. The end of the arc for now (the remaining character will likely be done later, especially Bushido), with:
  • Cachiru, an obscure bird-themed Argentine super-hero
  • Salamanca, an obscure Argentine sorceress and super-heroine (she and Cachiru are the only members of the Argentine group Super-Malon we know more than a few shreds of info about)
  • Istar is the best-developed planet DC character – with a JLA minseries revolving around her adventures. She’s fairly interesting, and she’s from Tunisia.
• Another character character from Kal Els current campaign set in Barcelona – Sagrado (the Sacred One)

Current number of entries is 3677.

More stuff, and this time around there are even some names people will recognise. Roll call:

• ART. New hi-res art for the following entries:
  • Black Widow I and Rockman (see “updates and rewrites” below)
  • Ivan Petrovitch Bezukov (see “updates and rewrites” below)
  • Moonstar (the writeup covering her Psyche era)
  • Ms. Marvel II (Sharon Ventura) (the early/first writeup)
  • Princess Python
  • Sunspot (classic era)
• Anna Wei, a Stark employee who is also a formidable hacker, engineer and Beautiful Kung Fu Chick(tm)
• Atlas, an obscure heroic fantasy character created by Jack Kirby
• The Confessor, a highly competent Russian assassin in the Marvel Universe
• A classic 1960s character by PAM – Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt !
• CHAMPIONS CHARACTERS. We now start our arc of Champions characters, adapted from the various editions of that landmark super-heroes RPG by REZcat. In this batch:
  • Buffalo
  • Demonfire
  • Green Dragon
  • Ogre
  • Rainbow Archer
• The Eagle, a patriotic crimebuster and war hero from the McCarthy era of the WildStorm Universe
• An adaptation of real-life Spanish double agent ‘Garbo’, by Kal El
• One of the big guns of the Marvel Universe — the High Evolutionary, by Peter
• *Another* of the Marvel big guns by Peter — Loki, God of Evil !
• UPDATES AND REWRITES. It has been a few batches without those, so:
  • The Danny Phantom writeup has been through a lot of additional work from the original author ; the results are now online
  • Black Widow II – the three writeups for Natasha on WORG have now been updated based on information in the two 2004-2005 Black Widow limited series. This chiefly means data about the whole Black Widow program, her childhood and teenage years, and the source of her Slowed Ageing and other enhancements she never knew she had before then. There also have been minor changes as the fourth writeup in that series is being written
  • The writeup for Ivan Petrovitch has been slightly updated.
  • The crappy notes for Gladiatrix have now been replaced by a real writeup
  • The writeups for the first Black Widow and Rockman have received clarification notes, as well as illustrations, regarding the newer version of those characters in The Twelve
• One of Hal Jordan’s girlfriends from way back then, the Gypsy psychic Kari Limbo
• Another character inspired by a song – Mack the Knife, by Kal El
• Yet another obscure 1940s Marvel/Timely universe — the Master Mind, Excello ! With clarifications and illustrations re: The Twelve miniseries.
• GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY UNIVERSE. Final entries in Gareth’s arc about that sub-universe within the Marvel Universe. If you just read ‘em it’s sad because it’s over, but it you use ‘em it’s good because you finally have everyone !
  • Rancor
  • Sidestep, lieutenant to Rancor
  • Talon, of the Guardian of the Galaxy
• Joining our slowly-growing collection of combat robots, the redoubtable Mechagorgon, who once defeated Iron Fist
• Slowly continuing Tom’s Black Lagoon arc – Sawyer the cleaner, a mute girl with a chainsaw.
• And finally, in the Marvel universe, here are Unicorn I and II. The first is a classic and tragic Iron Man villain, whose instability and complex alarums led to a rather big and detailed writeup ; the second is the far more obscure mutated madman who has been part of the Remont IV and Thunderbolts Army super-groups but wears the costume of the first Unicorn.

Current number of entries is 3657.