The Front is really Kyle’s concept, so I’ll have to get him on here to explain the concepts. The great thing about Kyle’s characters is that there are sketches and drawings of most of them, and these guys are no exception.

When we kick the SU website into gear (the fuse is getting closer to the dynamite on this), I imagine the Front will make a big splash.

To answer the general questions, yes, members of the Front are federal employees personally appointed by the President of the United States. Each president brings in a new team (though some members span administrations). Membership in the team brings with it an extremely generous benefits package. Members probably also reap large amounts of supplementary income from merchandising rights and the like. They are the best paid superheroes in the country, absent a few corporate spokesheroes.

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ERIK: My thoughts on the “Reserve” name is that the team represents a “special option” of META-4 (and, by extension, the US Government). In general, my take on the populace of America is that, while many are fascinated by superhumans, very few would like to be around during a superhero battle, since the things can get pretty dangerous. If the government tossed around the Reserve and the Front to solve every catastrophe, people would start to feel antsy. Therefore, the Reserve are held “in Reserve” for the really serious catastrophes and supercrimes, leaving ordinary humans and unaffiliated superhumans to deal with routine crime similar to that seen in the real world.

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Erik wanted to leave that open for the gamemaster. It’s like a McGuffin to move the plot along. Once the GM comes up with an awesome idea, he can push the campaign along those lines and have the players discover the secret. It could really be anything. I always imagined it was some proof that the government was being controlled by some outside force (Unitrol maybe?), or it could be aliens or a massive doomsday device built in cooperation with Hussein, or even some sort of item from the future that spells out certain death for particular people. Maybe it’s a newly constructed Mayan sacrificial altar, built by the US government for Kalak to help end the world in 2012. It could really be anything at all.

Of course, since we (Kyle and myself) have played in Erik’s M&M game, it’s not like he was going to tell us what his plan was — we’re going to have to figure it out as we go.

Forward | Courage Unlimited | A Note on Notes | Thematic Influence | The Luciferian | Roll Call | Knock-Off | Gimmick | Twist | Cyclone | The Pugilist | Minotaur, ANTAG and Bestiary | Iraq Discoveries | The Reserve | The Front

All content within the “Super Unicorn Unbridled” is owned by the respective authors. All the content was granted generously by members of Super Unicorn: Sean Glenn, Erik Mona, or Kyle Hunter on the Mutants and Masterminds Atomic Think Tank messageboard. ECORE and XEI do not claim ownership of any content. This series was put together to organize information about the META-4 setting and its characters.

Minotaur was originally envisioned as the “brick” of the META-4 universe. We hadn’t decided that the Reserve was a government sanctioned team yet, but we knew that most of our heroes would be on one team, and the Reserve would have a few members that came and went (Cyclone, Protonik) and a few that formed the core of the team (Marathon, Minotaur, Inferna). Once we decided it was a META-4 team, Minotaur’s origin fell in to place, and when we started on Crooks, we altered it further to incorporate the Bestiary into the mix. I imagine Minotaur at PL 14 or so. Pretty powerful, but not powerful enough to defeat the Bestiary on his own.

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You’re not far off on the inspirations there. As I’m a huge Astro City fan (Erik and Kyle not so much), the Old Soldier really impressed me with the idea of a returning immortal hero ala Elric. Wolverine has been a favorite of mine for many years. His attitude helped inspire a lot of what went into the Pugilist, and of course, Brad Pitt’s depiction of the pikey Mickey in Snatch (although the bareknuckle boxing of Fight Club, which is my favorite movie of all time certainly had a bit to do with the choice of a non-supered fist fighter). Of course, Tom Cruise’s character in Far and Away added to the bare-knuckled boxer mystique (and is Irish as well).

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Well, his armor was originally red, if you read Redhawk’s entry in Crooks!

Cyclone came out of a character I had created when I was about 6 years old. I don’t know if I knew about Iron Man then (I read a lot of Spider-Man, but I don’t think I read the Avengers, although I’m sure I had seen Iron Man in various ads throught the Spider-Man books). Originally, he was part of a three-hero team. Cyclone, White Lighting and Gladiator. You’ll note that White Lighting (and his evil archnemisis Black Thunder) did not make it into the META-4 cannon. Some ideas are good, some are not.

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The Twist is probably the least developed of all the characters, however Erik and I punted a few ideas back and forth while we were coming up with illustration ideas for the core book.

The Twist is another META-4 agent, discovered by Talia Thorne about the same time they discover Marathon. She’s been in some sort of lab being observed since she hit puberty and her powers appeared. The Twist is not actually elastic, instead her molecular structure is totally unstable, and her suit acts as a containment device to keep her together.

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As for Gimmick, we wanted a gadgeteer, sort of like Forge from X-Men. Someone who could make something out of nothing. But another tough guy or science nerd was a little cliche for our tastes, so we decided on the idiot savant model. However, as we went along, we didn’t want our character to be an idiot, and we wanted another female character, to sort of balance things out. A few ideas were batted back and forth, and we came up with Gimmick.

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Knock-Off was left deliberately enigmatic (like Mr. Mystery). He’s a hero with no name, no face, who disappears into the crowd when the fighting is done. We know he has a dog (you’ll note that in the picture of him sewing “HERO” onto his costume that his face is obscured in the photo of him with his dog).

Erik, Kyle and I envisioned Knock-Off as the guy who discovers he has super powers, and just decides to fight crime, because that’s what people with super powers do. Of course, his powers are never really his powers — he absorbs the attributes of what he touches, whether that’s a steel bar or Protonik. His identity is the costume. Out of it, he’s just an ordinary person with an ordinary life. In the costume however, he trades punches with the bad guys, saves the girl, and gets his photo in the newspaper.

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Let’s see, I created Pugilist, Mr. Mystery, Lady Hex, Minotaur, Inferna and Cyclone. Erik and I created Protonik from an illustration and concept that Kyle developed, The Twist was all three of us as was Marathon (Kyle named him as well), Headcase was Erik, Redhawk was me, the Atomic Brain was Erik and Kyle, Hyena was Erik, Damocles was my name, Erik’s concept, Kyle’s sketch. Gepetto was Erik, Kalak was Kyle’s sketch, Erik’s idea with help from Kyle. Remlok was my name and help with Erik’s idea.

Most of these characters came from the brainstorming sessions that we had. I have a notebook full of character names (some good, some bad, some that will show up and some that won’t) that we came up with while concepting. Some names we hit on as just being so damn cool (ala Mr. Mystery and the Atomic Brain) that we had to make a character to fit them. Some names we struggled with (the Twist and Marathon were tough).

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