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.

Members of the Front probably would campaign for their candidates. Good questions. Kyle might have more on this.

Members of the Front definitely must reveal their identities to the government. They are wholly 100% loyal to the president, and would find it extremely difficult to hide something from him.

I don’t think the government would worry too much about a member of the Front’s identity becoming known. I suspect (though Kyle can correct me) that most of their identities are public. These are extremely visible media celebrities, as well as super-powered patriots.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]

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.

In comic book terms, this is an Avengers/JLA/Authority-level team, or perhaps one minor shift down in terms of power. Beyond the Front, I’d hazard to guess that no other American superteam would equal their power. Due to that team’s massive size, the Statesmen, of the 1970s, were probably more powerful, but certainly not in terms of member-by-member comparisons (with a few exceptions, especially their leader, Trinity). Regardless, the Statesmen initiative ended with a whimper years ago, so they are no longer a factor.

So, there you have it. The Reserve are kept “in reserve” for the greatest threats to America (and sometimes other countries, too).

SEAN: As Erik noted, the Reserve are the guys the Government pulls out as a last resort. The Navy Seals of superheroes.

One of the ideas that we have batted around is that META-4 is not on the best of terms with the rest of the US government. META-4 is a security and research organization, not the army. The Reserve is their newest program, created in order to appease the higher ups in the big Pentagon offices, but also as a way to field test new agents, new equipment, and new tactics. META-4 would say that they don’t work for the government, but instead, they are a private agency, funded by the government, and in turn allows the utilization of their assets and agents.

META-4 has been involved in things like the Endgame Initiative, and even in the Iraq conflict, but their involvement is like the real world CIA or Special Forces.

Sort of the same way you only see special forces guys on TV or in movies, that’s the way the populace of the META-4 universe interacts with the Reserve. They go in, get the job done, and get out, and the public hears about it after they are already done. They are the Fast Response team of the superhero genre.

The Front, on the other hand, is the big public team. These are the JLA/Authority types. However, these guys are appointed and hand-picked by each administration, much like the President’s cabinet. Some heroes fall out of favor and are cut from the team, some, when nominated and background checks come in, have to step down. Much more political, but still some very heavy hitters involved.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]

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.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]

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.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.

So without further ado, I give you Minotaur (and a little Inferna).

Damon Sharpe, a well-decorated sergeant serving with the Green Berets, represented the best of the best. Unequaled in physical strength and endurance, his abilities already seemed more than human. Sharp’s quick thinking and leadership skills put him on the fast track through Officer’s Candidacy School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Before he was promoted to Officer, high rankingofficials of ANTAG (Applied Neural Technology Advancement Group) approached Sharpe with an unique offer. Volunteering to become the first subject for the secretive government agency’s new research program — the Man/Myth project — gave Sharpe the chance he was waiting for. The chance to become a hero instead of just a soldier.

While under the observation of brilliant scientist Chase Anthony, a regimen of drugs, training and exposure to the Axis Strand, an astral mass of myth energy, enhanced Sharp’s innate abilities. His physical strength increased three-fold, but the ANTAG research group, goaded into ever more dangerous experiments by Anthony, decided to expose the other subjects in the program to exponentially stronger Axis Strand energy bursts.

Although many candidates died during these experiments, Anthony, now calling himself Chimera, felt the program was a success. The disastrous creation of freakishly altered candidates like Undine, Behemoth, Cockatrice, and Griffon worried the more conservative elements of the science team.

With pressure from the president over the massive amounts of money spent by the so-called Man/Myth project, the Pentagon ordered an audit of the ANTAG program. Chimera presented his most disciplined candidates, Minotaur, Argus, Manticore, Undine, and Griffon, to Talia Thorne and the META-4 oversight committee. The team was impressive, and META-4 requested that Chimera’s agents be put into service immediately.

Minotaur and the psychic powerhouse Argus became part of META-4’s new Homeland Supercrime Security Team, the Reserve, alongside existing META-4 agents Inferna and Ant Devil. Chimera led the seven other living Man/Myth candidates into Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Reserve combated supercrime stateside while Chimera’s team discovered unspeakable secrets in deserts of Iraq. The Reserv’s early battle against Fuse, the villain responsible for the death of President Ben Farmer in 1995, left Argus in a vegetative state, with Ant Devil decapitated by one of Fuse’s flying razor missiles. Minotaur and Inferna barely escaped with their lives. The action was a terrible failure, and Fuse escaped yet again.

After their betrayal by the U.S. government, the Bestiary came home to the States, and the Reserve’s task turned to bringing in Chimera’s team. Unable to afford new super-agents, META-4 left Minotaur and Inferna to their own devices. Learning from their past mistake with Fuse, the pair spent many months searching for the Bestiary, developing a strong friendship along the way.

Minotaur and Inferna’s thorough planning, quick thinking, and even quicker fists foiled the Bestiary’s attempt to kidnap Attorney General Daniel Hubert, proving to be the event that brought the Reserve the attention it needed from the government. After what could have been a national disaster, the president agreed to grant additional authority to the Reserve, increasing META-4’s annual budget by 1.2 billion dollars. META-4 began training new super-powered agents, while Minotaur and Inferna tracked Chimera and the Bestiary to a makeshift lab far south of Arcadia.

In the intervening weeks, Chimera reconstructed much of the equipment he used as part of ANTAG, preparing to create more freakish servants by subjecting them to massive bursts of Axis Strand energy. Minotaur and Inferna defeated the team, but before Chimera could be captured, he turned the Axis Strand projector on his former subject Minotaur.

The second exposure to the Axis Strand altered Minotaur further, pushing his strength to levels beyond even that of the Bestiary’s giant powerhouse Behemoth. Minotaur’s physical appearance remained nearly unaltered, an irony not lost upon Behemoth and the other members of the Bestiary deformed by the Axis Strand.

Minotaur vowed to track down the Bestiary and bring them to justice, a task Inferna happily assisted with. Only weeks later, Cockatrice, the Bestiary member able to turn enemies to stone with a single gaze, rampaged through downtown Arcadia.

Only moments after the carnage began, the Reserve, assisted by local Arcadian mystery hero Knock-Off, brought down Cockatrice without further loss of human life. Unable to ascertain whether the now insane Cockatrice acted on orders from Chimera, or had been cut loose from the team, Minotaur and Inferna continue their mission to bring down the Bestiary, now aided by the newly trained members of the Reserve.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]

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).

The Pugilist (and Inferna and Protonik) were created when we needed to come up with some characters for the M&M cover for Ale Garza to draw.

Erik, Kyle and myself sat down over some drinks and starting throwing ideas back and forth. We knew that we wanted to hit a couple specific ideas. We needed a mutant (duh!) and a mastermind (double duh!). We wanted a flying guy with a cape, as sort of a Superman analog, and I really wanted there to be at least one female.

Kyle has several sketchbooks just stuffed with superhero concepts, many with no name. We poured over those and found good costumes to use for Protonik (Erik and I came up with the background of an ex-80s Soviet hero that shook off his KGB brainwashing to become a true “hero of the people”), and for Kalak, who Erik imagined as a crazed sorcerer who donned an ancient Mayan mask and was possessed by the spirit bound to the mask.

I came up with Inferna, a sort of no-nonsense mutant hero, very capable, as a contrast to the fact that she is a fire-based hero (usually the fire-based heroes are hot heads like Johnny Storm and such). I even gave a sketch to Kyle to have him redraw, which was then sent to Sam Wood to have him redraw, which then went to Ale, and then to Ramon.

The Pugilist was my pet character (much as the Atomic Brain and Kalak and Johnny Reb are Erik’s pets, and the Crush, Vagabond, and the Mountain King are Kyle’s). I wanted a tough guy, but not a typical tough guy. He had to be wiry and scrappy, and a good fist fighter, but not a fighter like the Thing or the the Hulk, or even like Captain America. He wasn’t going to have a gimmick, so no weapons, no fancy costume. A working class hero, a little like Luke Cage.

From that came the idea of an old Irish bare-knuckled boxer, and since he was an original bare-knuckled boxer, he’d need to be slow to age, or even immortal. I wanted his super power to be the ability to never be knocked unconscious, he’d always keep fighting, no matter what.

So from there, we got the Pugilist. I’ve always liked the ring that name has, with it’s turn of the century connotations. I gave a description and a really crappy sketch to Sam Wood, and he did that knockout concept piece that you’ve all seen on the site here.

The Pugilist will show up in Noir, so I don’t want to reveal too much here, but after that book is released, I’m going to do a modern-day writeup of our Irish brawler, and reveal more of his contemporary history. He’s a powerful character, with deep convictions, but who has also found that he is not infallible. He lost a whole team of heroes back in Stalingrad and it truly left a terrible scar on him, as he blames himself. The Pugilist in Noir is more of a scrapper, and more than a bit mouthy. His modern-day incarnation is much more reserved and laconic. He lets his fists to the talking for him. The one thing that never changes with the Pugilist is his desire to set things right. He is a unflagging champion for the little guy, and is always willing to take the fight to the bad guys, whoever they may be.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]

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.

Cyclone’s incarnation in the M&M core book came from that original idea (which I had polished into a pretty tight character concept in the last 24 years), guided through the META-4 filter, and out came a tough-talking, hard-oncrime, heavily armed and armored bad ass anti-hero.

Cyclone is at odds with a lot of META-4s heroes. He’s the guy who supported things like the Bangkok ‘85 incident. He thinks that bad guys should be put into the ground.

Much like Iron Man, he has a background in engineering and weapon design, but instead of running a multi-national corporation, he owns Ericsson Rocket Labs, which designs and produces hi-tech weapons for the government (this is how Cyclone got tied in with the META-4 folks). The Cyclone armor was originally an abandonded project that the Ericsson engineers put on a back shelf as too expensive to mass produce, and unlikely to be used for a single supersoldier.

Of course Buzz Ericsson, the man who would become Cyclone, was aware of the project, and had the armor plans and parts secretly delivered to his hidden lab, where he finished the prototype armor. Unsatisfied with it’s systems, he used the design to create a new suit, one with more devastating weaponry.

Once he completed the second suit, he began his crusade against crime. And not just super-crime, but all kinds. Bank robbers, muggers, mad scientists, they all get a taste of hot lead from the whirling gun on Cyclone’s arm.

This of course, has brought him into conflict with other heroes (most notably META-4’s team, the Reserve, who he served with for a time). Cyclone has worked with teams of heroes from time to time as it suits him, but mostly works alone. He never lasts on team very long, both due to his willingness to kill, and his attitude towards those who won’t kill villains in order to rid the world of their cancer.

As for the yellow and green, well, what can I say, he likes those colors.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]

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.

She’s able to, with the aid of the high-tech suit, increase the distance between the sub-atomic particles that make up her body, allowing her to stretch, reform and squeeze through all kinds of small spaces without losing molecular cohesion. We’ll probably come back to this character in the future and flesh out her origin and powers. You can see that some of that idea made it into Sister Blister in Crooks! with the idea of the suit which contains Sister Blisters pyrophoric skin. Sometimes when we had an idea that didn’t get used for it’s original purpose, it goes somewhere else, and this is a good example of that.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]

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.

Thoughts were that she was not really concerned with how she managed to build things, but more concerned with how she looked while doing it. Her gadget purse contains all the things a young girl with the ability to make nuclear bombs from an alarm clock and a Gameboy needs. Plus it has makeup and stuff. She isn’t a science nerd, per se, but instead has an innate understanding of technology, the same way a normal person remembers how to breathe, or walk. She doesn’t have to think about it at all.

As for visuals, she’s part Britney Spears, part Doc Rocket from Allen Moore’s reboot of Youngblood. She’s a teen queen, for sure, but not a sexy heroine in scanty clothes. We wanted her to be the positive role model type.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]

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.

Once the fighting is done, Knock-Off heads home, watches TV, and waits for another chance to put on the costume.

He eventually gets recruited for the Reserve, but he isn’t the sort that shows up for meetings or hangs out at headquarters. He has an amazing ability to disappear if you turn your back for a moment, and he seems to appear out of nowhere when he’s needed.

I like the character concept a lot, and I think it really fits well with an absorber character. It’s not his own super-powers or abilities that make him a hero, it’s that he can take on other attributes in order to save the day. So, he really struggles with the idea that it’s not really him in the costume, he’s just a generic hero, hoping to save everyone.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]

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).

The whole META-4 concept has been very collaborative so it’s hard to say that one character is mine or Erik’s or Kyle’s. We all added our say into the pot and stirred it around together.

In Crooks! we each came up with concepts we wanted to explore, and we assigned each other concepts to develop based on things we liked (for me, Murder Man and Butcher Boy were ideas that I loved. Kyle had come up with the name Murder Man, and I added Butcher Boy. Interesting though, Kyle and I had totally different ideas about how that character should be presented). Some characters were just skeletons of ideas (Waymaker, Carrion Queen) that got fleshed out through a lot of back and forth conversation. Some ideas were wholly formed when we started (Unifier, Johnny Reb, Moutain King). Erik was there to guide and control Kyle’s writing and mine (thank god, otherwise that book would have been chock full of bad grammar, passive voice, and spelling mistakes).

That’s part of what makes the META-4 universe so fun for us to work on and also so personal and dear to our hearts. We can’t imagine other people creating ideas to populate our world, because we have so many ideas we’d already like to explore. It’s a bit like imagining someone other than Frank Miller doing Sin City, or Kurt Busiek handing off Astro City.

[This was previously posted on my Superlink gaming fansite, ECORE Central, and reposted here for the benefit of Super Unicorn/META-4 fans everywhere!]