It's Harmless Insanity, Just Humor Him

One of the great things about the comicsblogowhatchamafloogle is that there's hundreds of blogs, with people coming up with all sorts of weird and interesting stuff to discuss. The downside is that sometimes they hit on something that leads to obsession.

Case in point. The actual post that originated this was two months ago, and I just found out about it yesterday. I haven't even read League of Extraordinary Gentleman - I know, I have to turn in my Comic Nerd card now - but I love a good "Create your own {insert term here}", so I've naturally gone nuts since then. Three teams already, and that's just from TV, not even getting into books, movies, anime, video games. . . gosh, I'm pathetic.

Relax, I'm not going to go over all of them, but I did want to outline the first team I constructed, and just go into what I was thinking when I did. So working from Bully's archetypes (more or less):

The Leader - Captain Benjamin Sisko, some time after the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. So this is after Ben returns from his time with the Prophets. He did say he'd come back eventually, so if we go forward a few years, he's a bit older, a bit slower, and probably mellowed a bit from his time. . . wherever the heck he was, so he can hopefully remain calm and reign in some of the more impetuous members of this group. Still, he always had that tenacity, where once he decides to start something, he won't let up, no matter what, and that's going to be needed. He can handle himself in a fight, he's been in enough battles to come up with some good strategies, and for someone that so often seemed to operate from a place of anger, he could be remarkably sly and deceptive.

The Rogue - Johnny Smith, The Dead Zone, pre-Greg Stillson induced visions of mass destruction. While it could be fun to have Johnny trying to get the team into helping to block Stillson, I think I want him slightly less obsessed over a single thing. Johnny doesn't totally fit the definition of "rogue" Bully gave, but he would be hard to trust. See, Johnny has this annoying habit of having visions about a person, and then not telling them he has visions about them, but rather trying to subtly manipulate them out of danger. This might lead to Johnny thwarting the team in battle sometimes, because he's trying to keep them alive, but not telling them that, which can lead to trust issues. Plus, at least one person on the team might get annoyed at Johnny slowing them down, with his cane and all. Plus, he has a cane, and you know what that means: sword canes!

The Muscle - Vic Mackey, The Shield, probably after the conclusion of Season 6. By then, I figure Vic will know who killed Lem, and he's going to be wondering who he can trust, which if Johnny leads them astray, can lead to fireworks (or firearms). Vic has no problem with beating the crap out of people who need to be beaten, he will do the dirty jobs without much difficulty, and he's fairly clever at getting out of tight spots (witness his frequent escapes of prosecution for his less-than-legal tactics). Plus, once Vic trusts you, he'll do just about anything to protect you. Throw in that Vic needs money to keep his two autistic children in their special needs school, and that could let him fill in certain aspects of The Rogue that Mr. Smith doesn't. And I'd be interested to see how he interacted with the next member, a veteran of state correctional facilities.

The Woman of Mystery - Faith Lehane, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, from the time between departing from L.A. (Angel Season 4), and arriving in Sunnydale (Buffy Season 7). Let's just have Faith skip over needlessly trying to make amends to Buffy (I'm not going to get into my frustration over the double standard between Faith and Willow's treatment), and get on that road to redemption by helping people. Why Faith? 1) The team needs someone who can keep Vic in line. 2) It needs someone who can protect/compensate for Johnny in a battle. 3) She's awesome. 4) She's got a complex and troubled past. 5) Unlike certain other Slayers, she doesn't constantly whine about said troubled and complex past. 6) I think you'd get an interesting dynamic between Faith - the proverbial kid who slipped through the cracks - and Johnny - the former high school teacher, who's probably seen his fair share of kids like that. Probably get Johnny trying to convince Faith to get her G.E.D., try to bolster her sense of self-worth, and if it took, he'd probably be like her Watcher. Which leads to Faith being the one keeping an eye on Johnny when he tries to do his "lone wolf, save everybody" schtick.

The Man With a Boat - If you insist on a boat, I guess we can use Rico Tubbs, of Miami Vice. He cruised around in speedboats often enough. But I'd rather have Michael Knight (Knight Rider), not out of any particular love of David Hasselhoff (though I am intrigued as to how he looks almost the same now as he did then), but because I love KiTT. There, I said it, I think that car is freaking awesome, and well, I guess Knight probably comes with it. Which isn't too terrible, since he demonstrated some ability to defend himself, or at least avoid getting shot. One note: we're taking KiTT from early in the series, before that added that weird "super fast mode" or whatever it was. I mean geez, the car could already go 270 mph, why do you need to go faster?

The Mastermind - To me, this character doesn't have to be tactically brilliant. The Leader should be able to come up with some good strategies once you're actually fighting. What I want from this person is to be able to gather important information, get the team the necessary equipment and transportation. That way, they get where they need to be in time, knowing what they're up against, and having what they need to stop it. That said, my Mastermind is. . .

Eric Cartman.

He may be an evil bastard (though, technically he does know the identity of his father), but he's a smart evil bastard. The plans he's devised, from using fear of Hell to try and make $10 million dollars, to the parental revenge business, to the incredible Scott Tenorman story, just genius. His problems lie in the fact he doesn't have talented enough people to work with, nor does he usually have sufficient resources to take his plans to the next level. Well, working with the League should be able to solve those issues, so it's just a matter of making sure Cartman doesn't trick the team into unleashing some kind of disease that only eliminates certain members of the gene pool, so I guess it's good that we have a psychic, and that Vic probably wouldn't be adverse to scaring the crap out of him.

Edit: As one final thing, I'd have Michael Kelso from That 70s Show as a first episode guest star. He'd assume the Classic Star Trek "Red Shirt Guy" role, dying horribly to set the tone of the first epsiode. Why? I think it'd be funny.

So that's what I got. If you didn't partake of the fun the first time around, head on over to Bully's and make a team in the comments. C'mon, what're you waiting for? Just follow the first link up above.