Our next installment in Bad Nineties Week is another staple of the era, the dreaded transparent ripoff. When you can't get the actual owners of a character to let you work on their book, the next best thing is to make a thinly-veiled copycat and go to town with it, calling it an homage when confronted about it and maybe changing a name or a few details when the C&D letters start coming in. This happened often enough that I had trouble finding a way to parody it without imitating an actual example, but in the end I settled on this hulking fellow as a reasonable approximation.
Despite probably being considered a hero by the publisher, I've done him up using villain rules since:
- He's phenomenally destructive
- When he shows up in a scene he's likely to be confused about who's on his side anyway, so fighting both heroes and villains is a likely outcome
- He's marginally more useful for a regular campaign where you aren't parodying 90s trash this way
Ang-Gorr
Once a timid and unassuming nuclear physicist, Bradford Weiss was transformed into the hulking rage-monster Ang-Gorr after being caught in the test explosion of an alien WMD recovered from one of the wrecks stored at Area 51. As Ang-Gorr he's working off decades of repressed resentments and feelings of inadequacy while living out his long-suppressed power fantasies, only rarely cooling off enough to revert to his original persona. While Brad spends a great deal of his (linited) time as a mere mortal bemoaning his fate and denying that he has any control over his brutish alter-ego, he seems suspiciously quick to put himself in situations where his adrenaline will spike again and cause him to transform back into Ang-Gorr. Of course, that may stem from the fact that both versions of himself have a massive price on their heads from various interested parties, and Ang-Gorr is much better at surviving confrontations with bounty-hunters, jumpy lawmen and mysterious men in black suits than some bookworm of a scientist.
Metatextually, Ang-Gorr is a blatant ripoff created by an artist who mostly wanted to draw big dumb fights and spectacular destruction without having to waste too much time on character development, dialog, plot, or any of the other boring stuff. This led to him churning through writers for several years before finally taking up the job himself, which led to ever-shaky sales tanking completely and him abandoning the book for greener pastures. This was followed by a brief period where a pair of A-list creators unexpectedly took over the character and managed to do a shockingly good homage to the original hero behind the ripoff. While the "new" Ang-Gorr was widely praised for displaying loving grasp of comics history and sales skyrocketed to unheard-of levels, things couldn't last. Jealous, the original creator came storming back, demanding to take over again before the new guys "loused things up" any further. He got his wish - and the series was cancelled for good within six issues.
Description: A hulking over-muscled brute, lantern-jawed and broad-shouldered, glowing from within with a brilliant green light that intensifies as his anger mounts. He wears nothing but a tattered pair of denim shorts and his roaring voice is nearly incoherent with rage.
Gender: Male Age: 45 Height: 7'2" Eyes: Bloodshot Red
Hair: Jet Black Skin: Glowing Firefly Green Build: Musclebound Hulk
Approach: Overpowered
Archetype: Formidable (Weakness: Calming Down By Any Means)
Health: 60 + (5 x H)
Powers: Strength d12, Leaping d10, Nuclear d10
Qualities: Close Combat d8, Hulking Menace d8, Fitness d6
Status: No Weakness Penalties - d12 / Both Penalties & Bonuses - d8 / Only Weakness Penalties - d4
Abilities:
Blind Fury (A) Attack using Strength. Use your Max + Mid + Min dice. Hinder yourself using your Max die. Take damage equal to your Mid + Min dice.
Rad-Spike (A) Boost using Nuclear. Use your Max + Min dice. Remove all penalties on yourself.
Rage Radiation (A) Boost using Nuclear. Use your Max die. That bonus is persistent and exclusive. Also, Attack with your Mid die.
Shockwave (A) Attack multiple targets using Strength. Use your Max die. Hinder each target using your Mid die.
Upgrades & Masteries (optional):
Contagious Wrath (I) +10 Health. While the scene is in the green zone, all heroes' qualities of d8 or higher are reduced by one die size. In the Yellow zone all of the heroes' qualities of d10 or higher are reduced by one additional step (two die sizes total). In the Red zone, all heroes' quality dice are treated as d4. Heroes can remove this upgrade with three overcome successes. If a hero takes a minor twist while taking these Overcomes, they lose access to a quality entirely until this upgrade is removed. If a hero is knocked out while this ability is active, create a new friendly minion with a die size equal to the hero's largest power die to represent the enraged and irrational hero.
Master of Superiority (I) As long as you are manifesting an effect related to a power you have at d12, automatically succeed at an Overcome involving usage of those powers.
Tactics
A straightforward brawler, Ang-Gorr augments his incredible physical power by amping himself up using self-generated Rage Radiation and shedding any attempts to calm him down with a quick Rad-Spike. Once good and mad he uses Shockwave to deal with groups of enemies, and anyone who seems particularly resilient drives him into a Blind Fury. Ang-Gorr's radioactive energy can also instill berserk rage in others, but he rarely spares the time and attention to aid his allies this way - and many of them have no desire to be driven into a furious rampage anyway.
When his energies are at their peak they can bleed mind-altering rage into all those around him as represented by his upgrade. His mastery reflects his peerless physical might.
Trivia
There are so many different ways to misspell "anger" already being used for existing published characters I had to resort to hyphenating one of them for an original supranym, and even at that I'm not positive I managed to avoid duplication. At least this variant will sound pretty good if the character gets revived for a story where he's randomly a barbarian or gladiator or something - but what are the odds of that?
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