#john sunlight

[evilhorse]

This poisonous spider named John Sunlight.

(Doc Savage: The Ring of Fire #3)

[krinsbez]

BT-ify Pulp Heroes: Doc Savage (Worldbuilding/Storybuilding)

So, this one is a bit different.

I started profiling Pulp Heroes and their supporting casts, and asked people to come up with BT-ified versions. Well, initially I asked what Mech they would use, but for many, things got very detailed.

Some of these (notably the ones I discussed in the poll months ago) got beyond this, but there are plenty who didn't. So, what I am going to do is start posting what the folks on the forumboard came up with, and see:

What you think of what was come up.

See if y'all have ideas to refine, enhance, or improve what they came up

Come up with ideas for stuff to do with these BT-ized versions of the characters.

And with all that taken care of, let's start with one of the most important, iconic, and archetypical Pulp Heroes...Doc Savage (and his aides)

(profiles via forumposter Starfox05)

Doc:

Doc Savage was project of the Society to produce the ultimate human - the pinnacle of genetic engineering, mating nature and nurture. A genius in a perfect body, raised from birth with all the knowledge available to humanity. Destined to lead the Society to victory. He's as tall as an Elemental, as quick as a 'Mechwarrior. Unfortunately - for the Society - he was so smart and eager to learn, he did study privately in addition to what his tutors taught him, and soon discovered knowledge they were not meant to teach him - amongst them philosophies and teachings abandoned by the Clans long ago. As he was a scientist through and through - questioning everything and never accepting anything on blind faith. So, he saw through the Society's stated aims, realised how wrong they were, and decided to abandon them to help humanity. Having ditched the Clan way for the same reasons, he gathered a few prisoners/experimental subjects he liberated and guards/tutors he turned as well as his young "cousin", a female version of him sharing most of his genes, stole a dropship and jumpship from the society and all the tech and supplies he could manage, and made his way to the Inner Sphere. He can pilot, repair, modify and construct anything - tank, 'Mech, Aerospacefighter, Battle Armour, dropship or jumpship. If he has to fight, he fights to disable, and he likes to switch and customise his ride, usually an Executioner OmniMech he heavily modified, to the task at hand. Unlike most Clan Warriors, he likes melee combat, often using his 'Mech's mass to wreck lighter enemies without harming the pilot, and often uses experimental weapons and even construction tools in any battle as well as the environment. Even though he and his group are nominally mercenaries (and hid their origin once they reached the Periphery) they often work pro bono, relying on selling new technology and Doc's services as a polymath to finance their excursions, in addition to a Germanium Mine he received from a grateful periphery planet's population whose water filters and fusion generators he restored and improved. He has started to acquire a small fleet of merchants whose jumpships and dropship he repaired for them, and who pay him back by a share of their profits. He and his group live on a special dropship, a former Collossus, that he modified into a flying base and research lab.

Ham:

A former Star Colonel who failed to die in battle or earn a bloodname, [Ham] was an eccentric Diamond Shark, keeping both a pet and an antique blade ready during his career. He was targetted by the society for his skill at logistics and was kidnapped when he was transferred to solahma unit so they could pick his brain for military tactics. He has an old rivalry with [Monk] dating back to a few clashes during trials. He pilots a Lancelot, the last 'Mech assigned to him by his Clan.

Monk:

[Monk], another talented warrior who never got a bloodname (though he tried numerous times), and he switched to the scientist caste when he aged out, and was recruited by the Society after starting an affair with one of their members. He soon fell out with the Society's leadership, though hid his true thoughts, and managed to teach Doc not merely science but also a few other tricks and unarmed fighting.

Johnny:

Another of Doc's original tutors, [Johnny] was responsible for most of his scientific training, after suffering the loss of an eye and having trouble with the implant that replaced. He was not very respected in the Society since he didn't specialise but kept "widening his horizons" as he called it - and since he often paid more attention to history and the past as a former Goliath Scorpion than the Society found tolerable.

Long Tom (admission, the entire reason for this series of projects was cuz of him):

[Long Tom} was a Naga-pilot turned bondsman turned tech, and mostly ended up in the Society's hand because they wanted to find out if his peculiar appearance and excellent health could be useful for their experiments. He went along with the others when Doc broke out and has been working on restoring a Long Tom artillery piece they picked up on a border planet (and modifying it so he doesn't need crew to use it).

Renny:

An Elemental working for the Society and serving as a link to the Dark Caste, Renny committed many crimes for which he is ashamed before he had a change of heart helping Doc. If Doc had not convinced him to atone by helping others, he would have killed himself long ago.

Pat:

Patricia was meant to be Doc's counterpart, and she has the skills, smarts and drive to prove it. What she doesn't have is his experience - she is younger than him and still learning, and sometimes a bit too eager for her own good. She pilots a Gargoyle if she takes the field, sporting a prototype rotary autocannon with six barrels.

And as a bonus, the closest thing Doc has to a nemesis...

John Sunlight:

A survivor of the Society, John managed to escape and determined to lead humanity to salvation whether it wants to be saved or not. Armed with the knowledge of his old organisation he plans to rebuild the Star League in his image, so to speak. He blames Doc for abandoning the Society and for wasting his talents helping others instead of leading them as the genetically superior specimen he should, in John's opinion.

So, what thinkest thou, BT and Pulp Fans of Tumblr?

[all-action-all-picture]

1989 ad for DC's Doc Savage series.

[maxwell-grant]

The apparition of impostor!Lavender Jack make me wonder : do you know if the "I'm like you but evil" villain archetype was popular in pulp fiction or is it more a super-hero thing ?

It's very much more of a superhero thing. Not that it didn't exist before, obviously the idea of villains designed to resemble and contrast their heroes is as old as villainy itself, but the idea of a supervillain who's specifically meant to be an evil version of the superhero, the "Inverted-Superhero Supervillain" as Peter Coogan calls it, was defined in comics.

If you wanna get specific, technically the first supervillain to be specifically defined as an evil opposite to the hero (as opposed to just being an evil take on a general heroic concept) was Moriarty, who's is very strongly defined as almost an evil twin of Holmes. This, I'd argue, is Moriarty's greatest contribution to the history of the supervillain, because he was neither the first, nor the one who popularized the idea of a supervillain or arch-enemy (those would be Dr Jack Quartz of the Nick Carter magazines as well as the grand criminals from the feuilletons that inspired Holmes).

What the pulps had, in turn, was supervillains who were meant to evoke popular heroes, like Fantomas who evokes the gentleman thief and John Sunlight in his original form who greatly resembles Holmes, and supervillains who were protagonists, but not specifically inverted takes on superheroes, because those as we define them weren't around. The Shadow fought several criminals who were intended to evoke him, and as far as I can find Gibson was the first person to specifically coin the term "super-crook/criminal/villain" to describe villains (which does not mean he created the concept).

The grand criminals of the dime novels and feuilletons led to the pulp supervillains, which grew bigger and badder and more outlandish and laid down much of the foundations of what we currently used to define supervillains. And throughout this history, the idea of costume-wearing supervillains gradually starts to show up, first of these being the Wolf Devil from Queen of the Northwoods (1929), likely the first superpowered costumed supervillain in Anglo media, followed by the Klan robe-wearing pulp villains, and then odd costumed supervillains like Bill Everett's Great Question and The Lightning from The Fighting Devil Dogs, until at last we get to the comic book supervillains proper. And with them, the Inverted-Superhero Supervillain, as Peter Coogan describes it:

The inverted-superhero supervillain is limited to the superhero genre, primarily because they have superpowers, codenames, and costumes. Although there are earlier costumed supervillains in comics—such as the vampiric Monk, whose schemes Batman ruins in Detective Comics #31—the Joker and Catwoman are probably the best, early examples of inverted-superhero supervillains.

Prior villains like the Monk draw on masked and robed pulp predecessors and mad scientists like Lex Luthor or the Hugo Strange have a long lineage outside of comics. But the Joker and Catwoman mark an innovation in villainy because they are such direct responses to the superhero by creators looking to expand the superhero genre.

It's a bit trickier to say which exactly would be the first Inverted-Superhero Supervillain, along the lines of what you describe. Coogan claims it's the Joker and I disagree, because while the Joker's contrast with Batman was definitely important to his popularity and he represented a clear break away from the more pulp-esque Monk and Hugo Strange, he was hardly intended as an evil version of Batman (that would be Killer Moth in the 50s), nor was he that different from the common Dick Tracy villains or other villainous clowns in fiction like The Whisperer's Grim Joker or The Shadow's Number One to really merit that kind of distinction. You can point to other Golden Age supervillains who specifically take the superhero image of "caped man with a chest logo and/or cape & mask" like Fawcett's Captain Nazi or MLJ's Captain Swastika. I'm fairly sure there's earlier examples still, probably in the funny animal superhero comics that influenced Fawcett's output, but I'd have to go digging further for those.

Although I will point out that The Grey Claw, who I discovered more recently actually debuted almost a year ahead of Superman (in 1937), was a comic supervillain very much dressed in what nowadays we'd consider a superhero outfit, and also predating the Lightning's own costume. He was modeled quite a bit on The Shadow, not just in costume but also in laugh and mannerisms and radio boogeyman persona, but he was armed with weird sci-fi weaponry at odds with the gritty crime story he's in, and he was dressed in a costume that included not just a cape and slouch hat, but also a mask, a waistband sash, and a chest logo, and even did the classic Superman pose as seen above. Is he the true first Inverted-Superhero Supervillain? Probably not, despite his international publishing, history has not been kind to him. But so far, I'd say he's as good as any candidate.

I'm totally not biased on this regard, though. No, sir.

[all-action-all-picture]

A 1989 ad for DC's Doc Savage series.

[evilhorse]

Haven’t you always wanted to meet Doc Savage?

(Doc Savage: The Ring of Fire #3)

[jcw3-protectorate-enthusiast]

John Sunlight from The Fortress of Solitude might have the absolute best pulp villain introduction I've ever read. Absolutely enthralled by this book's first chapter and wish I had the time & energy to read more today.

"It was unfortunate that Doc Savage had never heard of John Sunlight. Doc Savage’s life work was dedicated to attending to such men as John Sunlight, preferably before they managed to get too near their goal. But Doc Savage did not hear of John Sunlight in time."

[evilhorse]

Genesis: John Sunlight part two (circa March 1992)