ASH Art Third Heroic Age Last Updated: 6/30/23 Lalafell Brightsword added. Back to the ASH gallery page

    Having split the Second Heroic Age stuff off onto its own page, I of course had to go back and do the Third Heroic Age as well (and Fourth Age, etc). As usual, please don't copy or hotlink without asking.

• The Colonel: In the wake of the Paranormal Warfare Treaty, most governments set to work trying to find loopholes. Project Electric Warrior was one of America's attempts, and while The Colonel's cybernetics were successful, it was later ruled that he still fell under the treaty's provisions. So he was ASH's original leader and government handler, but later moved to the Capital Patrol, a group of "former" military supers acting as civilians...but conveniently supporting U.S. foreign policy abroad. Felt tipped pen and colored pencils.
• Bubba da Gargoyle: He pissed off the wrong magical entity and got cursed to slowly turn into an unliving stone gargoyle. In the meantime, though, he could turn into a living, moving gargoyle. But every time he used that power, he brought his final petrification closer. In this picture, he has failed in a prank war, having asked the wrong team member for a paintgun gadget and having it literally go up in his face. The thing by his feet is one of the Trikes...children of Sluggo the Buggo (TEEHEE the CLOWN Car in the original Champions campaign) and the Colonel's flying motorcycle. Felt tipped pen and colored pencil.
• Strafe: A criminal who stole a suit of power armor, only to find that the cybernetic control system forced him to be a hero. Felt tipped pen and way too much gray colored pencil.
• Strafe III: During a summer crossover (a non-gamed summary of what happened over break), Strafe was nearly killed, and had to be cyborged to survive. After a brief and ugly Strafe II period (not scanned), he upgraded to this. Felt tipped pen and colored pencil.
• Barnstormer: Light-controlling mistress of distraction, and also CLOWN's mole inside ASH (hence the Trike). Yes, one of the PC heroes was also a member of a villain group. Felt tipped pen and colored pencil.
• EMerald: Power-suited long-time member and eventual leader of ASH. Her original suit was built by her boyfriend, who used it to control her into committing crimes (he was the original Doublecross, but this has since been retconned). After destroying that suit, she modified a Rocket Ranger armor (I had a crossover with the Torg RPG) for her own purposes. Felt tipped pen and colored pencil, with marker for the thrust plume.
• Hellbound: Originally the First Heroic Age teleporting daredevil Johnny Angel, he was banished to Hell by an evil sorceror, where he was tormented for decades and slowly corrupted...but his heroic core remained intact, and when ASH defeated that sorceror, Johnny was freed to become the flame-powered half-demon hero Hellbound. Felt tipped pen and colored pencil. And inappropriate Sharpie.
• Set: Meek archaeologist Myron Telix became the hose for one of Set's avatars...the heroic one. Longest-term member of ASH, and before Rad came along he was the villains' Special Friend...if you didn't drop him hard on segment 12, he made you eat your accessible foci. Felt tipped pen and colored pencil.
• Rad: Radioactive member of ASH, son of Ladyhawke (father never revealed in-play), his 5d6+1 Energy Killing Attack guaranteed that villains give him their full attention...to the point that the "-31 or below" Stun range was known as "Rad-Land". Felt tipped marker and colored pencil. The most day-glo pencils I owned.
• Banshee: Sonic-based power armor heavily ripped off from Bubblegum Crisis. Along with EMerald and Ravenfire (who I've never drawn, her player was a better artist than I), she was one of the "Armor Angels" or "Terrible Trio" subteam. Felt tipped pen and colored pencil, with marker for hair.
• Devastator: The blind man who would slay the world, master of forces, and probably the most dangerous person in the Third Heroic Age. Felt tipped marker and colored pencil.
• Annihilator: One of Devastator's cyborg minions, as seen in ASH #5. They work in teams of five, with the ability to link power feeds and channel insanely nasty blasts (40d6 in Champions terms, usually using about 10 dice for "spreading"). Felt tipped pen and colored pencil.

• Tymythy Twystyd: Mark Friedman's second PC in the campaign, this twisted spatial mage became a major player in ASH's backstory. Seen here with the aardvark demon Naobata. Inked in technical pen, colored in a mix of marker and colored pencil. The vest says NSSA, or National Super-Security Agency, which I later renamed the Department of Super-Human Affairs.
• The Wanderer: Tym's mentor, an unaging Romanian mage who was around in the Second Age, but didn't really do the "superhero thing" until the Third Age. Done in technical pen and marker. Unfortunately, I can no longer remember the name of the player. Brian, I think.
• Avatar: One of the last survivors of the magical civilization of Alpha Centauri, mentioned in the Arcanovore story early in ASH. Technical pen and colored pencil.
• Blitzkrieg!: A Scytharian Defense Unit cyborg, and a deliberate Liefeld parody. Chris Tatro's second PC in the game. Technical pen and marker, the text at the bottom says "a fromage".
• Rechtigkeit II: German for "Justice", she's the second known hero to wield that axe. As seen in the ASHistory story Justice. Colin Shaw wields it in the Fourth Heroic Age. Inked in technical pen and thin Sharpie, colored in markers and colored pencil.
• Herr Stark: The evil son of the original Rechtigkeit, he slew his own father (hence the ghostly image behind him) but failed to get his hands on the Axe of Justice...a pity, the axe might have made him a better person. Brought into ASH via the WarStar series. Costume in Crayola marker, flesh and hair colored pencils. Rechtigkeit's ghost done in colored pencils as well. Inked in technical pen. 9/27/93.
• Lord Ebon: A Ditko homage, in case it wasn't obvious. Technical pen, marker and colored pencil. Major recurring threat to the Raiders, and he got an entirely new origin for them (the one faced by the original ASH was the Black Paladin character from Champions post-apotheosis-scheme). Inked in technical pen, colored in pencil.
• Doublecross: After his fall from grace, but before being transformed into the Lord of Living Light, Bennett Rush was the powersuited hologram-using villain Doublecross, master of espionage and betrayal. Technical pen and marker.
• Onslaught: Herr Arnold Zugmann, who would be the figurehead of Khadam in the early 21st Century, was originally the patriotic super-soldier "hero" of Khadam, with genetic enhancements and alien technology grafts. Drawn in technical pen and marker.
• Challenger, Horus and Strafe: Three members of the original Conclave of Super-Villains, "Curseworld" versions of Solar Max, Set and Strafe. Triton wears the armor of this evil Strafe, and the 2020s Challenger was named in part after this one. Inked with technical pen, colored in a mix of markers and pencil.

• Brightsword II
  • 1996 Design: Not actually done as a part of the ASH Universe, she was created for my Modern Knights RPG, but Coherent Super Stories retconned the family line into the ASH timeline. Her father was the first major superhero of the Second Age. Technical pen and colored pencil, done on 6/10/96, before I got the hang of drawing blond hair.
  • 2008 redesign: Redesigned with a deliberate Bruce Timm look and feel. Made the sword consistent with her father's sword. Inked in gel pen, colored in Prismacolor markers and pencils. 4/10/08.
  • City of Heroes version: With the addition of a downward pointing sword chest emblem, I decided to see how close I could get to Brightsword 2008 using the CoH costume generator. Domino masks don't come with eye lenses, so I faked it using one of the "mystic" faces that has blank white eyes. I didn't actually make this as a playable character, as I was experimenting using the advantages of a level 50 character on the test server at the time. June 2011.
  • Gogori Gori cosplay as Brightsword: This will take some explaining. Brightsword (Gloria Jackson) is one of the characters I tend to use on MMOs as a first or second character (along with Kat Anders), and using Final Fantasy XIV's naming conventions for their dwarf/halfling equivalent the Lalafells I settled on Gogori Gori as a name. Her main class is Gladiator/Paladin, and I eventually got her an energy sword and an invisible shield, although a red sword or cross on the chest wasn't something I was able to pull off. On a whim, I decided to draw Gogori as Brightsword, in the pose of the 2008 picture above, or as close as the toddler bodies of Lalafell can manage. I changed the sword to a more Allagan-inspired design, because I've never really been satisfied with the generic-looking hilt of earlier versions. June 2023. (Note: there's a 2 at the end not because this is Brightsword II, but because the first "best scan I could manage" was still not great. My scanner's software had an update that removed the ability to scan art well, so I struggled with manipulating phone pics. Manually remove the 2 to see my best stab at that. But I found later that GraphicConverter had an update that let it directly use my scanner, and it's a little better, although I still had to use the blur tool to remove some invisible-to-normal-sight details that got brought out by the scan.)
    
• Darkshield II: Same as with Brightsword, he got retconned into ASH along with his father. Mostly "colored" with a Sharpie, plus colored pencil highlights and marker for the FX.
• Lady Lawful II: Co-star of LL&DD and daughter of the version active in the First and Second Heroic Ages. Andy Burton's character, he tends to commission art in addition to using City of Heroes for conceptualizing. Commissioned works moved to the Commissions page.
  • City of Heroes image by Andy Burton.
  • Drawing by Dave Van Domelen. Just as Brightsword above was based off a Bruce Timm Harley Quinn piece, this one is based off one of his Poison Ivy pieces. Just, you know, to encourage the femmeslash premise. ;)
  • City of Heroes Comic #1: Using City of Heroes screenshots and a comic-building program, Andy made a comic with the CoH versions of LL&DD.
  • Super Hero Squad Lady Lawful: A Super Hero Squad She-Hulk modified into Lady Lawful II. Super Hero Squad is a semi-chibi line of toys, in which the female figures have child-like heads, big hands and feet...and adult breasts and booties.
    • With girder
    • Without girder, and from rear
  • Lady Longear: A colored pencil sketch of Lady Lawful as a bunny anthropomorph. Utterly non-canonical, at least as of August 2010 when Dave drew it.
• Doctor Developer: A young, non-paranormal mad scientist specializing in deathtraps, as seen in Time Capsules #9 and the LL&DD series. Pencils. Yes, it's meant to be a Rube Goldberg homage. Fine point writing pen and Prismacolors. 3/31/07.
  • City of Heroes design by Andy Burton.
• WarStar: You may have read about his Astro Spear being used in various stories, now here's the man himself, in all his pseudo-Kirby glory! This picture was so large it wouldn't fit on the scanner plate, so I had to scan my 68% reduced photocopy "test" version instead. I also learned that if you're going to use a marker to do heavy Joe Simon imitation inking, it's probably best to add the black last...the "original" picture of WarStar's kinda greyed out. Oops. For a sense of scale, the Astro Spear is 2.1 meters long, not counting the plasma torch flame. Yep, WarStar is BIG. 2/12/00
• Challenger: Evil version of Solar Max, leader of the original CSV. He's decked out in armor built to help him avoid assassination in the literally cutthroat world of Khadamite politics. The boots are extra-long (so his feet are actually pointed inside them) to give him the ability to tower over a larger fraction of the population. 6/5/08.
  • Design Sketch: Kinda skinny, but mainly intended to get the basic shapes and colors worked out. I decided after finishing this that I didn't like the boots.
  • Pencils: The pencils for the finished work, scanned mainly because I didn't want to ink the energy effects but wanted a reference to add them back in. I did change the crown after this scan, though.
• TechnoMystical Antiochus V: I never drew what AV looked like during his swan song, just had some general ideas described in WarStar. So I decided to see how close I could get to that general idea using the City of Villains costume generator, and made Antiochus V up as a Robotic/Forcefield Mastermind with Mystic origin so he could throw some spells around. I'd have liked the lines to be a little more sigilistic, but the "Circuit" pattern came closest to what I wanted. April 2009.
• Solar Max: 1989-1994 progression. This is actually a mix of "at the time" art and new stuff, but I figured I'd put it down here rather than up in the top section. This Solar Max is the ASH universe version of me (Dave Van Domelen), who was born in 1963 rather than 1970 so that he could have a PhD by 1989, when he showed up in my ASH campaign as a "GM Character".
  • 1989: When he first got his powers, all Solar Max could do was generate droplets of solar plasma. He could throw them at people, sure, but he preferred to use them to power supertech devices. The "high concept" here was "normal clothing costume", a kick I was on in spring of 1989. The original drawing is painfully bad, I'd gone off on a weird anatomical tangent at the time, and don't really wanna scan it in. And yes, I really had facial hair like that in 1989, although it was a bit scragglier. I figure 7 extra years would have let it fill out. No intentional resemblance to any member of any heavy metal band. The pose here is meant to emphasize his lack of experience, as he's surprised to be shot at while he's reloading his laser torch. Drawn May 2009.
  • 1990: When the campaign shifted to 4th Edition Hero System, I remade Solar Max and gave him a more traditional supersuit. The anatomy is still rather iffy, but I liked the general costume design enough that all subsequent versions use some variation on it. Drawn in late 1989, but I'm saying that in the current ASH continuity Solar Max didn't get this outfit until 1990. He learned to internalize his power, and could "power up" for about an hour a day (most powers with the new "Only in Hero ID" limitation, but the suit was a small EC with flight, force field and life support).
  • 1991: A more heavily armored version influenced by Larry Stroman's art on the Double Dragon comic that came out that summer. My second attempt at using a quill and ink for inking, a style I'd continue to use until spring 1992 (by which point I was really sick of ink spatters). Drawn in the summer of 1991.
  • 1994: By the real world 1994 I'd moved on to JakZak, so I never really established how Solar Max I settled on a final design that held him until his acquisition of the space armor in 2000. So here it is, a compromise between the armor of 1991 and the smoother lines of 1990. I'd always intended for the sun rays to be red lines, but didn't get a good red inking pen until after 1991. Fully covering, since it's got to be spaceworthy. By this point, the same attack that panicked him in 1989 is calmly deflected. Drawn May 2009.
• Vencedora: Unsanctioned Brazilian "flagsuit" in the mid-1990s, something of a rabblerouser who deliberately took the name of the Second Age sanctioned flagsuit Vencedor as a way to tweak the Powers That Be. Picture is unfinished because it wasn't working the way I wanted (details on the drawing). Drawn May 2010.
• Edouard, the Catman: The original Champions campaign version was pretty much exactly Oedi from the Dreadstar comic, so I decided to distance Edouard a bit more from the source by changing his cat species. I picked Russian Blue because, well, Two Lumps webcomic. :) This was also an experiment using my new fineline gray marker for inking, and I used a lot of marker and pencil to try to capture the look of the Russian Blue's fur. Drawn October 28, 2010.
• Armor Angel: A superheroic identity crafted for the Jenny Doll (as seen in Coherent Super Stories #28) in 1989 as part of a failed comic tie-in. Drawn April 30, 2013.