Build-a-Baddie Returns (And It’s Bigger, Badder, and More Chaotic)
The last Build-a-Baddie Poll was such a hit, it spun off not one but two projects — a microfic and a 1,500-word short story!
So naturally… we’re doing it again.
Welcome back to Build-a-Baddie — the crowd-sourced character experiment where you decide:
I take your winning combo and turn it into a brand-new illustration.
There’s also a Wildcard section if you want to whisper your weirdest ideas into the void. No promises… but I will read them.
Voting opens this week on Patreon. Bring your best (and worst) ideas.
Transcript — Evolution Success Stories
A single-panel cartoon shows two bug-like creatures standing on a forest floor surrounded by large green leaves. Both have tall, thin, purple bodies with spindly limbs and antennae. The bug on the right has colorful, symmetrical butterfly wings with orange, black, and white patterns and looks relatively normal — an evolution success story The bug on the left has a strange, mismatched set of wings that resemble bold, graphic signage instead of natural wings. The wings are black with bright orange arrows and large words pointing in different directions, including “TASTY,” “HERE,” and “YUM!” with arrows directing attention toward the bug’s own body. The malformed-wing bug looks uneasy, while the butterfly-wing bug looks on. Beneath the comic, a caption reads: “All I’m saying is… it’s easy to be a fan of evolution if all you hear about are the success stories…”
To the right of the panel is a blue box that reads: “Intermission — The Evil Inc storyline will continue next week.”
Battle for the Cowl #3
Creative team: Story/Pencils by Tony S. Daniel; inked by Sandu Forea
Well, it’s official. Nightwing is the new Batman.
And, if you think about it, that makes Jason Todd the new Joker.
Think about it. The mechanism that made the Batman / Joker pairing so fascinating was they were always two sides of the same coin. They were both born of tragedy — but each chose radically different paths from that point.
In the same way, Nightwing and Todd share similar origins: Both became Robin. Both were separated from Batman. And both had to react to Batman’s departure.
In respect to that last point, Nightwing chose to react to the absence of a Batman by carrying on the best of what the Dark Knight stood for. Todd chose to pervert the very worst.
Battle for the Cowl #3, aptly so, features a climactic face-off between the two erstwhile boys wonder.
The first of many.
