Another pack of entries got dual-statted with DCA material. As it turns out it’s less of a pain than keeping them stored at the Atomic Think Tank. Roll call :

• Widowmaker
• Smasher (Death’s Head henchman)
• Black Lightning (Early, 1970s telling)
• Scott James (Chuck Norris)
• Thundarr the Barbarian
• Céline McGowan aka Max Tac Echo Zombie
• Princess Ariel
• Smiling Skull
• Bloodclaw
• Bolshoi<:a>
• Bane (Early)

As noted there’s benchmarking/standardisation work going on on the DC Adventures front so these are done *before* there’s a hundred writeups to modify whenever we refine our benchmarks.

The current work resulted in changes applying to most of the writeups currently on the site:

• All entries on writeups.org have had their Perception Ranks aligned with the new scale in OMACS II. Mostly it’s changes by (0,2) points, but the scores now better align with the scores observed elsewhere so writeups.org characters will no longer be weirdly unobservant. And one entry was missing a Perception Skill altogether…
• The notation for enhanced attributes has been standardised using parentheses in the stats blocks and Ranks of Enhanced Attributes in the Powers. The writeups where people just had high Attributes stemming from Powers now more clearly express what is the baseline score and what is the enhanced score. The White Tiger (Hector Ayala) would be a very visible example of this (which has the benefit of working the stats of his amulets-less alter ego into his stats). It draws an interesting contrast for people who just… are what they are (like Svetlana X) rather than having documented “powers”. As a result of this Angela del Toro now has a single set of stats rather than a powered and a depowered one.
• I’ve removed the weird Quirks from the Copperhead entry, which noted that Enhanced Strength couldn’t take the total Strength above a certain threshold. I’m not quite sure of what the best way to address this is, but I don’t think it’s a Quirk. Also removed the notes addressing this from the Slagg entry since it should be discussed in a more central place.
• The entry for Starfire (the swords-and-planets one) now includes DCA information about the aliens. These sections were previously presented in large grey boxes but we’re steering away from those for legibility reasons.
• The entry for Batwoman (Katherine Rebecca Kane) has also been rejiggered so the information about her gear and her dad is easily accessible for both DCH and DCA players.

Battlestar remains the exemplar of the current writeups.org stating style.

And here’s a few more DC Adventures stats which I got the time to add to the site today after all.

• Beowulf
• Copperhead (Lawrence Chesney)
• Grendel
• White Tiger (uplifted tigress)

All the stats published so far will be subject to multiple revisions as we develop our benchmarks and usage, gain experience, and doing these stats becomes instinctive enough to start putting in some extra care. It took more than a decade and a half to reach the current standards for DCH entries (for what they’re worth), so the DCA ones are not going to be super-awesome right out of the gate.

The work at our friendly, upbeat ATT thread has resumed. A good part of the work is still about establishing clear benchmarks and usage so the DCA material will be stated in a coherent, grounded manner.

We’re still not going to rush through dozens of writeups as long as the benchmarking and orientation work goes on, but here’s a small pack of writeups that have received DC Adventures stats :

• Hacker (Jack Marshall)
• Sally Sonic
• White Tiger (Hector Ayala)
• Giuana
• White Tiger (Angela del Toro)

The White Tiger (Hector Ayala) entry includes an experiment with a quick script so our dual-statted entries do not have several screens’ worth of esoteric game stats near the beginning. We’re not too sure about the best approach yet, feel free to let us know what you think by commenting on this post.

One big hammer blow and the backlog is looking reasonable flat, *plus* a fair bit of artwork and texts rework was shoved online. Hopefully this’ll free up time for the horribly late M&M work… Roll call:

• Gareth burned a few clips over our old Deadshot notes – they’re now much better.
• The G-Girl entry has had some minor revisions by the Jobe.
• TRON: GENESIS. Continuing Bryan Venable’s Tron continuity with an entry for Lux.
• Ethan has an entry for Morgan Adams, Geena Davis’ character in Cutthroat Island. Arrrrrr !
• RONNIE THUNDERBOLTS ART. Additional art for :
  • Marvel Boy (Noh-Varr)
  • Master Man
  • Moon Knight
  • Moonstone (writeup 1). Also redid the main body shot.
  • Ms. Marvel (writeup 3)
  • Nighthawk (Defenders). Also redid the main shot.
  • Nova (Richard Rider)
  • Nuke
  • Ox
  • Patriot III (Bradley). Also redid the main body shot.
  • Penance (Baldwin)
  • Piledriver
  • Pretty Persuasions
  • And Protocide
• EVERQUEST. This time we’ll tell you about the Amygdalans, who are sort of mini-Cthulhus that feed on fear.
• From Chris’s 3001 campaign comes a variant version of Powerpax.
• CROSSGEN. We don’t have any systematic Crossgen coverage, but when the mood strikes… Bryan wrote Ethan of Heron, the protagonist of Scion.
• PAULA BROOKS. Second and last entry for Tigress’s mom – as the Huntress, a Golden and Silver Age DCU villain.
• ALPHA FLIGHT. Writeups.org now has an article about a non-compressed timeline for Alpha Flight, using publication dates as much as possible. It’s not finished yet but we needed to put it somewhere to keep track of the changes and, well…
• MORE ART. Continuing to – slowly – beef up the Legion of Super-Villains entries illustrations-wise. More art for :
  • Nemesis Kid
  • Magno Lad
  • Zymyr (and the robot henchmen got their missing APs of Swimming)
  • Lazon
• KILLER FROST. Second and last big entry for Dr. Lincoln, covering her modern career as Killer Frost.
• TASK FORCE X. Another of the tigh-lipped killers who fought Ostrander’s Suicide Squad – Metamorpheus.
• SOUL CALIBUR. Tom now covers Siegfried Schtauffen.
• REWORK.
  • Streamlined the layout and texts for Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) (writeup 1) once again – now it should be more or less readable. Don’t worry, her Expertise with her personal soup recipe is still there.
  • Reviewed and reworked the texts for Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) (writeup 2).
  • Reviewed and reworked the texts for Nova (Richard Rider)
  • Fixed a stupid formatting error for Killer Moth (Earth-1). then reworked the text for style and brevity because heh, it was open.
  • Streamlined texts for Atlas, clarified that it doesn’t cover his Superman return, enhanced the art a bit
  • Increased the resolution of most Quorra pictures
  • Black Betty now has two more banners, the texts have received a quick spray of polish, and a technical tweak has been made to the Boobs Of Death.
  • Mongul and Neron both have an extra shot of art, just because.
  • Protocide texts reviewed and streamlined, in particular to realign with the neutral writeups.org tone (there are already dozens of blogs out there about bad comics – this space doesn’t exactly needs us).
  • Gareth added some sub-sections in the Marvel Boy (Noh-Varr) entry to facilitate reading.

4725 entries, yes ? Good, good

This one is savagely varied. Roll call:

• RONNIE THUNDERBOLTS ART. It’s been a long while, so here’s more stuff from this excellent illustrator :
  • Jack Monroe (writeup 1, writeup 2, writeup 3, old notes). The third writeup has further arts improvements.
  • Jack O’ Lantern II
  • Patriot
  • USAgent
  • Jolt
  • Joystick
  • Hawkeye II
  • Killer Shrike
  • Lemar Hoskins (writeup 1, writeup 2)
  • Karolina Dean aka Lucy in the Sky
  • Luke Cage (writeup 1, 2003 writeup)
  • Machinesmith
  • Major Mapleleaf II
  • Man-Killer
  • Meteorite III
  • Mister Fantastic (Earth-616)
• CRIME DOCTOR. Fourth and final entry – the first post-Crisis Crime Doctor. We now have full coverage of all Crime Doctors, which I expect will result in major news media coverage.
• Pur_See_i8 has a profile for Dom Cobb, from fan-favourite movie Inception.
• Also a fan favourite, but much much less recent – Ethan has a profile for Hong Kong Phooey, a short but fondly remembered 1970s cartoon feature.
• REWORK.
  • Leito (David Belle’s character in District B13) – texts redone, a lot more photos.
  • Mollaka (Sébastien Foucan’s character in Casino Royale (2006) – texts and illustrations reviewed and improved
  • Invincible Red Robot – texts and illustration reviewed for brevity
  • Major Jones. Textual edits for style.
  • Ramon Bracuda. Not the best villain ever, admitedly. Anyway, texts rewritten, illustrations redone and research reviewed.
  • Luke Cage (writeup 1). Texts polished, Harlem Rivals retcon integrated.
  • Major Mapleleaf II. Texts polished.
• GREGOR NAGY. Told you there’d be more. In this batch, a variant version of the Son of Superman – an obscure 1970s character – in Universe AZ.
• TASK FORCE X. Gareth has coverage for this group of enforcers that fought the Suicide Squad during the Ostrander era, starting with Pathfinder.
• TRON: GENESIS. Continuing Bryan Venable’s Tron arc, we’ll start in style with Quorra.
• EVERQUEST. Another EQ1 player character – the troll beastlord Sauryan, with material about Luclin, the Vah Shir, the Khati Shah, warders and so on.
• SOUL CALIBUR. Tom has kindly turned my horrible old notes for Taki into a full-featured writeup.
• TIGRESS. Artemis Crock’s mum, back when she too was a rebellious young archer, the Tigress of the early 1940s.
• And lastly a homemade character – the Squirrel Detective, by Bryan Venable.
  

4715 entries, or so I’m told.

The recent Schtick changes have taken effect throughout the site.

The Ammunition Freedom change has been propagated :

• Hawkeye (Clint Barton)has gone from Arrows o’ Plenty to Ammunition Freedom (Weaponry (Archery))
• The TV Young Justice version of Artemis had already been modified (in fact she was the impetus for the change)
• The following guys have gone from Ammunition Freedom to Ammunition Freedom (Weaponry (Firearms)) — El Mariachi, Wesley Gibson, Selene (Underworld), the Trooper (Iron Maiden), Chow Yun Fat
• Spider-Man (Earth-616 Peter Parker) has Ammunition Freedom (Weaponry (Exotic)) ; he previously had the Schtick restricted to his webshooters

The Make-do Equipment Schtick has been propagated :

• Steel (John Henry Irons) and Nightshade (Tilda Johnson) have lost the Kit-Basher Schtick and gained Make-do Equipement (Gadgetry)
• Steel (John Henry Irons) has gone from Improvised Weapons to Make-do Equipment (Missile)
• Colonel Kira Nerys now has Make-do Equipment (Military science, Gadgetry) and lost the Scholar (Improvised equipment). Also did minor clean-up to the discussion of her abilities, and an actual Powers & Abilities section’s coming up.
• Lady Killer (Helena Labrava) now has Make-do Equipement (Weaponry)
• Gilles Redferne (Warlock I) now has Make-do Equipment (Weaponry (Melee, Missile))
• Ah Keung has Make-do Equipment (Weaponry (Melee)), of course – as does the more generic Jackie Chan entry.
• Cody Travers has Make-do Equipment (Weaponry (Melee)) as does his brother Kyle.
• Still discussing the Spartan II special forces Scholar in this context
• Zaran II (Zhou Man She) has Make-do Equipment (Weaponry (Melee, Missile))
• Tigress (Artemis Crock) had already been modified with Make-do Equipment (Sports accessories), which is not entirely standard but heh, custom skills FTW
• Sickle (Natasha Ulyanov) has Make-do Equipement (Weaponry (Melee – edged weapons only)).
• Taichi Hiraga-Keaton lost his extra Skill and gained make-do Equipment (Weaponry)) for standardisation’s sake
• Stalker (the DC heroic-fantasy one) now has Make-do Equipment (Weaponry (Melee, Missile)) and has had a minor Skill redundancy fixed
• Sydney Bristow has Make-do Equipment (Weaponry))
• Diamondback (Rachel Leighton) has Make-do Equipment (Weaponry (Thrown)) in both her entries (writeup 1, writeup 2)
• Agent 47 no longer has an improvised weapons Schtick
• Added the Make-do Equipment (Weaponry) Schtick to Zaran (Max Zaran) just in case

It looks like I’m re-accumulating backlog, let’s publish to be on the safe side. Roll call:

• NEW RULES FILES. Some additional work on Schticks :
  • The entry is now called New Rules (part 6 – Schticks) to facilitate searches
  • Fixed bad formulation for two Schticks – Fighting Array and Walk Like A Panther – thanks to Chris.
  • Ammunition Freedom has been clarified and expanded to include another Schtick that had been accidentally left out of the compilation (Arrows o’ Plenty, which was the equivalent for archers)
  • The Schticks about improvised equipment (Improvised Equipment, Kit-Bashing, and a new one called Circus Mundi) have been collapsed into a single Schtick called Make-do Equipment.
• YOUNG JUSTICE. Bryan’s profile for the popular TV version of Young Justice in his batch is Artemis.
• By coincidence, we also have made various improvements to the profile for the DC Universe version of Artemis Crock. It has been broken up into two entries – writeup 1 is for her career as Artemis, and writeup 2 is for her early career as Tigress.
• Peter has been through quite a few classic TV characters during the summer – here’s a profile for Kwai Chang Caine from the series Kung Fu.
• Roy’s N2 profile has been modified after further discussion about the power level of Namor during WW2. A further consequence is a new boxed section in Namor’s entry about his wartime stats.
• TRON: GENESIS. A campaign setting by Bryan Venable – more material in subsequent batches !
• UNIVERSE AZ. In this batch Azrael’s big entry for Universe Az’s version of Guy Gardner.
• MAN-BEAST. One of the Teeming Millions of WORG readers requested a Man-Beast entry an embarrassingly long time ago, and now we have reached the point where we can… start doing profiles of related bit players to clear the way. The Fastest Man Alive ain’t gonna fear competition from us. Anyway, this batch has a profile for Triax the Terrible.
• SECRET SIX. Continuing to publish Gareth’s work on this already-missed series – Jeanette the Banshee.
• EVERQUEST. A cool mob from Luclin – the sonic wolves. Sonic wolves are neat.
• DRAGONBALL. This time it’s Ethan and it’s Dragonball GT, with a profile of Zoonama.
• XIII. Fourth and last entry from this classic French comic with the master hitman the Mongoose.
• ALPHA FLIGHT. We’re not committed to a focused writeups arc, but we are slowly replacing our very old and embarrassing AF notes by modern entries covering the Byrne run. After Puck, it’s Heather Hudson‘s turn.
• REWORK.
  • While we’re at it, numerous improvements in the art for the Puck entry and the Snowbird placeholder.
  • A paragraph in the big Claw the Unconquered entry has been spun off into a small boxed section about Howardian India as Claw’s Known World.
  • Grotesk‘s entry has been rewritten, updated, matched against secondary sources released since our writeup was, and got one new bit of art from same. It’s much better now.
  • The big huge Typhoid entry saw some additional rework to further improve legibility.
  • The texts of the first Tiger-Shark entry have been edited for style, clarity and brevity.
  • Ditto for minor racist villain Blind Faith.

4,706 entries. I wouldn’t have guessed – it easily feels like 4,710 or so.

Another straightforward batch without fancy features – just content. Roll call:

• ANIMALS FILE. Added a bit of detail to the gorilla stats. Gorillas are an important part of comic books history.
• DRAGON BALL. Yep, we still do some DB entries, and this one is definitely the heavyweight character in this batch. Bryan covers the famous Vegeta. I’ll be back for the inevitable joke when this writeups gets 9,001 views (though it might take a while).
• JAMES BOND. Peter features the guy who might be the most famous cinematic James Bond villain – the steel-teethed Jaws.
• 1970s CAGE STUFF. Curiously this batch has another guy with steel teeth – obscure Cage villain Cornell Cottonmouth.
• SUICIDE SQUADRON. There’ll be a fait bit of 1960s War That Time Forgot material in the future, for no special reason. In this batch the very first G.I. Robot.
• Chris’s notes for the Eternal Cybele are in. We’ll eventually have to rebuild our stats for Eternals, but in the meanwhile…
• CRIME DOCTOR. Next-to-last Crime Doctor in the DC Universe – the current holder of the name, Dr. Anica Balcescu.
• UNIVERSE AZ. A profile for one of the bearers of the name “Valor” in Azrael’s campaign universe.
• Special Agent Dale Cooper (emphasis on “Special”) from the landmark TV series Twin Peaks now has an entry thanks to Peter. Thanks Peter !
• FILIPINO COMICS. Adam continues to present the basics of comics from the Philippines with another classic character, Lastikman.
• TIGRESSES. More exploration of obscure corners of the DCU with the various villainessess answering “Tigress” – starting with the Golden Age Tigress. With our thanks to Roy Thomas for clearing a confusing bit about parentage.
• REWORK. Very minor improvements to our José Luis Torrente entry. Much more thorough rework on our Venus (Golden Age) entry for style.

Ooops forgot – 4696 entries now.