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.”
The
Magnum Opus arc of
Thunderbolts has quickly turned into tone of my favorite passages in this outstanding series. Fan-fave Deadpool is the central attraction as a new team of T-bolts — replacing the old team / current Dark Avangers. Deadpool is trying to get Norm to pay up for a little work the merc-with-a-mouth did back in the Civil War, and he’ll get paid even if he has to rip through this new gang of idiots to do it.
What makes this such a fun read is Andy Diggle’s ability to hit such nice sweet spots in the story. For example, Black Widow II is using a special Oscorp-designed weapon which overrides Deadpool’s cancer — which is kept at bay by Deadpool’s healing factor. The logic here is that eliminating the cancer will cause Deadpool’s healing factor to spiral out of control, thereby killing him.
In the words of Paladin: “You’re tellin’ me Norman Osborn found the
cure to
cancer… an’ he turned it into a
weapon?”
Another wonderful touch is the blossoming realationship between two unlikely black capes. I’m not talking about Black Widow II and Deadpool (although that relationship
is intriguing, if only so reviewers like me can walk right up to the line with double entendres about how she
gave him his
head back).
No, the relationship I’m hoping to see followed after this arc concludes is the Deadpool / Taskmaster buddyship that works so well in the closing pages of Thunderbolts 130. I mean, with “facial” reactions like those to the right, who but Taskmaster could truly play opposite the twisted Deadpool?
