Podcasts/Episode I-65

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The Letters Page: Editor's Note 65

Original Source

Intro

Good morning, everybody!

Show Notes:

Run Time: 1:27:28

We do some goofs at the beginning, as per usual! You know how it goes!

Let's talk about the upcoming schedule!

  • Tuesday, April 4th: Episode #244 - Writers’ Room: A Silver Gulch Story
  • Tuesday, April 11th: Episode #245 - Writers’ Room: A Hero turned Villain
  • Tuesday, April 18th: Editor’s Note #66
  • Tuesday, April 25th: Episode #246 - Writers’ Room: Alien Artifact on Insula Primalis (which is the Citizen Dawn event from the core game)

Listen to those episodes! More importantly, submit questions for those episodes! I would tell you to get questions in for next week's episode (Tuesday, March 28th: Episode #243: Writers' Room: Sentinel Comics Horror Host for Tome of the Bizarre), but we've already recorded that episode! So, questions for next month, it is!

Also, while I'm issuing directives, also check out Sentinels of the Multiverse: Disparation on BackerKit! It's going really well!

See you next time!

Characters Mentioned

Summary

Questions

  • In Editor’s Note 56, you said that the Variants in Definitive Edition are supposed to represent specific stories in the character’s history; this led me to wonder: do First Appearance Variants also work that way? Some, like Argent Adept, are very obvious when they’re in “First Appearance mode”, but others like Tachyon are less so; so I’d like to list off each hero’s base and FA powers and my guess as to when the changeover happened: [They jump in here] They don’t agree with the premise of this question that there’s a “First Appearance mode”. [Rather than copy out each of their powers, I’ll just drop this link to Unity’s Workshop where you can pull up the character cards for yourself.] The real difference here isn’t that there’s a different mode they’re in up until a specific point when a switch flips. The base card is a generality - how do you normally think of this character, in isolation from any specific story context? The “story” of First Appearance variants are mainly “in this comic where we first see them, this is how they operate”. The same goes for other variants - “Oh, right, for this one story they were doing a different thing.”
    • Legacy (Freedom Four #88 with the start of the Silver Age and his role in a team): Nothing has really changed for Legacy between his First Appearance and his “standard” self. What’s going on here is that his First Appearance is a solo story where he is protecting innocents. While the writing around him does change over time to emphasize his role as a leader in a team context, he’s still the same guy (and does have solo stories).
    • Wraith (same issue as Legacy, with the reasoning of her moving from a solo detective to a team combatant): There’s an argument that pre-Comics Code Wraith was a bit of a darker character. The difference in intent here is that the FA power is Haunt the Shadows and is her being sneaky so that she can watch and so a thing as opposed to Stealth which is her just avoiding notice. Observation vs. defense.
    • Tachyon (less sure here, but maybe something along the lines of “woman who is fast” to “woman who does science fast”): Eh… She was doing science fast from the beginning. She was an unpowered “science consultant” prior to being Tachyon. There may have been a little of what you suggest where the speed thing was mostly a combat thing at first.
    • Bunker ([this one’s a bit hard to parse, seems like there’s a “different” Bunker suit in his solo comics vs. FF?]): Hmm… There’s a bit there where the solo book treated the suit very much in a “this is a walking tank” machine as opposed to a thing that lets a guy do superhero things. Visually it’s a very similar suit outside of the variance inherent to different artists being involved.
    • Absolute Zero (some vague point at which writers decided that AZ was “allowed to be good with his powers”): No, the difference is that the first time we see him he’s just blasting cold indiscriminately [one presumes because there are birds everywhere] where his standard approach is to let a little heat or cold in to start off his cycles. He’s also probably written in cycles - “Oh no, I’ve hurt somebody. I need to get better control of my powers” then he does a good job not hurting people for a few years. Then he hurts somebody accidentally, and the whole thing repeats.
  • [At this point they just punt on doing the rest because they’re just going to quibble with things like this the whole way. Hopefully you get the idea at this point.]
  • [This letter also involves lots of character cards, see the Unity’s Workshop link above to look at them yourself] What’s the context of all of the character card incapacitated sides [I’ll include the issue numbers]?
    • Legacy: America’s Finest Legacy #180, December ‘86 - Legacy has taken the full brunt of Voss’ flagship’s laser. See the Thorathian Conquering Fleet emblem blasted into the ground behind him (and the attack is actually two lasers, because Thorathians).
    • Legacy FA: Freedom Five #107, March ’59 - Baron Blade defeats Legacy and throws him from his floating Blimp Base (a precursor to the Mobile Defense Platform). His public defeat shakes the belief that his team and the public have in him.
    • Wraith: Mystery Comics Vol. 2 #161, January ’87 - Both the Wraith and Maia Montgomery disappear. Maia is “on an extended business trip” and Wraith fakes her death. She’s absent from the comics for a few months. This is the first issue where volume 2 is once-a-month again and it really is a mystery if Wraith is dead or not. In issue #163 Mark Benedetto begins a push to take over her company. Wraith returns in #165.
    • Wraith FA: Mystery Comics Vol. 1 #74, September ’52 - An early Ermine appearance (but not her first). The “Diamond Death Trap” speaks for itself, really.
    • Bunker: Freedom Five #305, September ’75 - Bunker’s suit is taken over by Omnitron.
    • Bunker: The Indestructible Bunker #200, June ’69 - Final issue of the book. It’s a “protest comic”.
    • Tachyon: Lightspeed #5, October ’95 - As discussed in the episode about the title, this is the issue from Tachyon’s perspective where she’s identified the villain plan, determines their “base” is in Ohio. Villains get the drop on her, mastermind revealed as Biomancer. They start draining Tachyon’s power that she built up by running around the 4 other locations.
    • Tachyon FA: Cosmic Tales Vol. 1 #232, April ’60 - Tachyon winds up on a planet whose gravitational tilt is drawing it dangerously close to a black hole. She’s got to run really fast to pull the planet out of danger, but can she run fast enough?!
    • Absolute Zero: Freedom Five #250, February ’71 - Citizens of the Sun attack the Freedom Five HQ. The villains knock out the power and so the heroes have to fight them while “trapped” in their own base. AZ is trapped in the building outside of his suit.
    • AZ FA: Freedom Five #285, January ’74 - Absolute Zero has nightmares about freezing the whole world and shuts himself off from the rest of the team. This begins “the psychology of Ryan Frost” which remains a major theme for him from then on. He’d been “grumpy guy” prior to this, but this is where we start getting into how he pushes people away because he’s worried he’ll hurt them. The ’70s really were the “seminal arc” for the Freedom Five as that’s when their personalities were really fleshed out.
    • Unity: Freedom Five #736, August ’01 - The death of Omnitron-X after battling Omnitron IV.
    • Unity FA: Freedom Five Annual #12, June ’91 - While the Freedom Five are absent saving the White House, Unity makes mechanical golem replacements on her own to deal with a Magmarian incursion.
    • Argent Adept: Virtuoso of the Void Vol. 1 #100, August ’81 - Argent Adept is defeated/captured by Akash’Bhuta who drains his Void power.
    • AA FA: Toll of Destiny #3, February ’73 - Argent Adept doesn’t understand his powers yet, opens a rift into the Void. This releases a Void Demon called Taranerach into our Reality.
    • Fanatic: Prime Wardens Vol. 1 #37, January ’89 - “Haunted Fanatic” arc begins following the events in the previous month’s Tome of the Bizarre.
    • Fanatic FA: Fanatic Vol. 1 #27, July ’77 - After defeating demons, Fanatic sees the destruction it caused. Apostate “just makes observations” leading her train of thought to “God being wrong to choose her” - she leaves the world behind rather than Fall and become a destroyer. See podcast episode 223.
    • Captain Cosmic: Conflux #2, March ’71 - Captain Cosmic encounters Infinitor and discovers that the villain is his brother Nigel.
    • CC FA: Conflux #3, March ’72 - Galactra steals a moon!
    • Tempest: Cosmic Tales Vol. 1 #300, December ’65 - Tempest is captured by Voss who attempts to Gene-Bind him.
    • Tempest FA: Stranger in a Strange World #6, August ’65 - Tempest is captured by F.I.L.T.E.R. (and to be clear, these are just random F.I.L.T.E.R. goons, not Death-Con or K.N.Y.F.E.).
    • Haka: Tome of the Bizarre Vol. 2 #251, November ’79 - “Is Haka the last person left alive on the planet?” It’s a precursor to the Final Wasteland story, but isn’t explicitly/officially that at this point.
    • Haka: Battle Unending #5, June ’70 - Haka on a “monster island” called Manoaloa (not Insula Primalis). He fights a giant lizard thing called Grannog.
    • Ra: Baptism by Fire #3, September ’95 - Ra has been captured and tortured by the Ennead.
    • Ra FA: Arcane Tales Vol. 1 #200, April ’64 - “Death of Ra” when Blake Washington resolved to not use his powers.
  • Which character is most likely to meet the Loch Ness Monster in comics: Guise, Chrono-Ranger, K.N.Y.F.E., or an unholy team-up of all three? It’s a cryptid, so Chrono-Ranger.
  • We see in Unity’s deck a lot of bots clearly based off of things. We have the Freedom Five, Baron Blade’s Mobile Defense Platform, and Insula Primalis raptors. Did anything inspire her to make bee bot? Was there a flower related villain that needed stinging? Or is bee bot the one bot we see that unity came up with unrelated to anything else? We see a lot of bots that are unrelated to other things. She makes bots all the time almost incidentally. She’s intentionally a bit annoying and part of that is the self-referentiality that goes on with her (making bots based on the Freedom Five, say). Bee Bot makes it into the deck as a fan-favorite story (in-setting and here [just look at that flavor text, comedy gold right there]).
  • On the most recent episode of the Letters Page, you guys mentioned an X-Men story that you just “edited out” of your brains as if it never existed. Would you mind sharing what that story was? House of M? The one where Professor X is actually, maybe evil? Something else? The entire [Grant Morrison run](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_X-Men_(2001_series)). The whole Cassandra Nova thing and “Magneto becomes a drug addict” stuff.
  • Did you consider putting the Freedom Five janitor Larry Hillburn in the Freedom Tower deck? They considered having him in there as a Supporter, but ultimately there was just too much going on in the deck already and so he got cut.
  • Did Alpha ever fight Tefnut? They don’t have a place picked out for such a story, but just because they hadn’t thought of it by now doesn’t mean it never happened. It certainly didn’t happen during the War of Heliopolis arc, but it could fit in during the period after that where the Ennead were more fragmented and showed up here and there. There’s a lot of room in Alpha’s book for it to happen, but it wouldn’t have been during any major Ennead story.
  • Has the Freedom Five ever had any sort of major interpersonal team hardships? Like a rift forming in the team over a disagreement, or a member briefly quitting the team? There’s certainly going to be short term drama here and there (in this issue: [so and so] leaves!, but then they’re only gone for like half an issue before they’re back). There might even be a handful of issues where these 2 characters aren’t talking to those two characters over something. This sort of thing could make for an interesting episode prompt, but it’s not anywhere near the level of “breakup” as the Prime Wardens had, or even as close to the breakup that almost happened to Dark Watch during the Matthew story.
  • What is the Adhesivist's favorite brand of glue to eat? He doesn’t eat it; he puts it on people. He also makes his own glue and is a snob about it.
  • Does Freight Train have a favorite type of train? If he got sent to Silver Gulch how pumped would he be? He would be very pumped about getting to see one in Silver Gulch. He likes all trains, but he’s probably really into those old steam locomotives. Ones with all of those mechanical bits and bobs moving around.
  • Since he was revealed today, who is Iron Legacy’s nemesis icon? They don’t know what anyone’s talking about. It’s just the nemesis icon that Iron Legacy has. [For those who haven’t looked at it, most of us very much think that it’s a lantern icon with a female silhouette in it - so Felicia/Young Legacy is likely who it is.]
  • My partner has been making some arcade style art of Sentinels characters and moments (posted in the art channel of the LP Discord if people want to see). She has done Freedom Five and Dark Watch, and I was thinking that Prime Wardens would fit with Atlantis, but I didn’t know which villain would go best. Also, if you feel like musing on it, what were arcade games like for Sentinels Comics? Prime Wardens in Atlantis = Apostate as the best villain. The Sentinel Comics arcade games were awesome. There were some fighters, some side-scrolling beat-em-ups. Dark Watch works the best for the latter since none of them fly (short of some occasional magical hovering).
  • I was discussing Time Travel in Sentinel Comics with some people, and we talked about how in the past, you’ve said that most time travel in Sentinel Comics is hopping from one timeline to another. We then went to list all the different (frequently) time traveling characters, and came to an odd conclusion. you’ve said that most of them (La Capitan/Comodora, Chrono-Ranger, and Omnitron-X) can do actual time travel. This seems like a retcon to previous information. Am I completely off-base, or have you changed things? If you have changed things, could you tell us why? From the beginning they’ve been pretty clear that La Capitan does actually do what you’d classically call time travel, even without knowledge of Sentinel Comics’ oddities. That being said, the way she goes about it is to get on her time ship, leave that spacetime location in that reality by sailing out into the timestream, and then arrive at another spacetime location in that or another reality. She can do “classic time travel” this way, but it’s just as easy for her as going to a different reality would be. Chrono-Ranger’s is complicated by the fact that every job he goes on is for the purpose of changing history in a significant way. The Final Wasteland is one that’s been overrun by cryptids, so if he travels back in time and kills the progenitor of a cryptid, that means he’s by definition in a different reality than the one that led to the Final Wasteland happening (including when he shows up in the “present” of the main comics continuity). Omnitron-X is also from another reality originally. The main thing to keep in mind here is that there’s an oddly “spacial” component to time travel in Sentinel Comics (beyond just the spacetime thing where “time is a dimension”) - because the “time stream” is a separate “place” you can be, all time travel works like how they explained for La Capitan, just with her being the one with the most control about navigating that separate place and arriving where she’s aiming. So, all three of the named characters have done quote-unquote “real time travel”, but for characters other than La Capitan it tends to be more incidental/accidental on the occasions that it “actually worked”.
  • So who was the most fun heroes between Core and RCR to work on, either art or gameplay wise? The least fun ones for Adam are the robots. Christopher suggests that this would mean that Unity was a rough one, but that’s not quite the same. Her “robots” don’t actually have to work - they’re held together by magic. Christopher says that all of them have a “fun point” and some of them just have that happen earlier in the process than others. Setback’s fun point was really early. Harpy’s was later. There’s also the really fun, really early stage of the two of them being on a super long call with each other where they hash out everything that’s going to go on in the upcoming set before the actual design work starts. This is a “what’s your favorite?” question and Christopher is no good at those. For Adam, he’ll say that he just really likes drawing Wraith. No complicated armor, wings, or robots. Captain Cosmic was a lot of fun too, but Wraith is his favorite.
  • The Mad Bomber Baron Blade event has the following text: “Whenever the top card of the Environment deck is a Villain card, Baron Blade deals each non-Villain target 2 projectile damage and 2 fire damage. Then, put that card under this card.” Combat Prowess gives the Wraith also has a Reaction to reduce an instance of damage by 2 and if that prevents her from taking damage she can play a card. If she blocks the projectile damage from the Event with Combat Prowess, then plays Abduct and Interrogate to destroy a target (which lets her reveal the top card of each deck, discarding or playing each), and she discards the Villain card that was on the Environment deck, does the rest of the Event effect continue (which would by the reading mean that you’d have to retrieve the Villain card from the trash to put under the character card) or fizzle since there is no longer a Villain card on the Environment deck to activate it? Something else? The heart of the question is: does a triggered effect continue even if the condition that triggered it is no longer present? The correct answer is “The card is discarded and the effect stops.” An easier to recognize example is a target that’s going to hit all other targets. If, as a Reaction, a Hero manages to destroy that target after its first “simultaneous” attack, the rest of them are prevented. Your example is a more complicated trigger, but it’s the same idea. You don’t have to remember that a Villain target was on top of the Environment deck.
  • Say I’m playing a game and another player manages to, on their turn, grant me a Play Phase, a Power Phase, and a Draw Phase - if I decline to play a card in that Play Phase or use a power in that Power Phase, would I get to draw an additional card in the granted Draw Phase? If you manage, during a single other player’s turn, you somehow manage to be granted all three of those phases and you elect to skip the Play and Power ones, sure, draw that extra card. You’ve earned that extra card if you’ve managed to pull off that level of shenanigans. Note that being given the option to play a card, use a power, and draw a card doesn’t work - you have to be given the full phases.
  • Why the change in Citizen Assault from EE to DE where he went from being a white guy to a black guy? He… didn’t. The art’s better in DE, and he certainly had a lighter skin tone in the EE art (plus the lighting effects around him are making it a bit weird), but he’s still meant to be black. He was based on somebody that they know in real life.
  • Are there any other minor racial/identity changes made in the process of going from EE to DE? They haven’t done any of these. [Well, The Contract is definitely a different guy in DE, but with positions like the Underbosses the individual actually in any given position may be meant to change over time due to the nature of the enterprise. Underbosses changed for a number of positions between EE SotM and Sentinel Tactics, for example.]
  • What’s going on with Citizen Assault’s quote: “Don’t get too close to me. It’s not that I don’t like the company. It’s that I can’t be trusted”? His powers hit everything around him. He’s also a devious person. He’s going to hurt everyone around him and he’s going to hurt everyone around him. He’s a bad guy, but an honest bad guy.
  • As far as I can tell, the only art of Nigel Lowsley’s face is on Captain Cosmic’s deck back - which one is Hugh and which is Nigel in the stargazing panel? Also, is the prominent figure in the court scene Hugh? Yes, that’s Hugh in the latter one. In the brother’s shot, the one in the foreground is Hugh, the one with longer hair is Nigel.
  • In the Bunker Foes episode you mentioned that the first appearance of the Death-Con cyborgs controlled by Crisis Man was the issue on Recharge Mode and that that was a three-issue arc that was “hinted at” in his deck - given that Upgrade Mode was the only other card that cites an adjacent issue, can we then assume that this “hint” is actually finally telling us which issue the art from Turret Mode is from - Freedom Five #371? Yup! They did have a discussion during planning on whether to cite the issue or to commit to the bit, and the bit was just too good.
  • Also, for the purposes of describing character appearances in card art, does the Recharge Mode cyborg have a specific designation (like Death-Con Bravo or something) or, while they had designations in the comic, for these purposes just treat them as a group? These would have had specific designations, but they hadn’t bothered picking which one this was, so just treat them as a group for these one-off examples. They will need to round these things out in the future.
  • When can you elect to take an impossible action? For example, Ophidia’s End Phase is “The Hero with the second lowest HP either destroys 1 of their Ongoing cards or deals themself H psychic damage.” Can a Hero with no Ongoing cards in play choose to destroy an Ongoing card or do they have to deal themselves the damage? Another example: Ra’s Solar Flare has a Start Phase of “Either destroy this card or Ra deals himself 5 fixed psychic damage.” If Ra doesn’t take damage, does the card get destroyed? Is there a difference between Ra being immune to damage vs. being unable to deal damage causing the lack of damage? [This is a contentious question and the letter starts a little past the hour mark for those wanting to go on the journey with us over the course of about 6 minutes. It takes a roundabout “talking through the variations” discussion to arrive at the following after initially giving what would turn out to be the wrong answer:] In such cases you have to choose something you’re able to do. You can’t choose to destroy an Ongoing card if you don’t have any in play, but if you have one in play that happens to be indestructible, you could select it as the target of the destruction. Similarly, if you have a choice to deal damage to yourself, you cannot choose it if you “cannot deal damage” as you’re attempting to do a thing that you are currently not allowed to do, but you can select yourself as a target to deal damage to if you happen to be immune at the time. [An analogy someone used that I liked to describe the difference here was that if one of your choices is “punch yourself in the face”, if you happen to be wearing a helmet that prevents any damage being done, you’ve still thrown the punch. You can’t choose to throw a punch if you don’t have any arms.] Part of what turned this around is the idea that, let’s say you’re in an 3 Hero game and so the damage condition for Ophidia is to deal yourself 3 Psychic damage. If you have 1 point of damage reduction and so only take 2 damage, does that still fulfill the condition? It feels really bad to say “no”, so taking a reduced amount of damage must still be okay. If so, what about if you aren’t immune to damage, but just have enough reduction to make an attack deal 0 damage? Logically it must still be okay, so actually taking the damage isn’t the issue. The attack of H damage happened, it’s just that the effect of it was negated. If a target cannot deal damage then it can’t even begin this process. Similarly, you can’t select an Ongoing that doesn’t exist for destruction, but if you have one that can’t be destroyed, then you’ve found a loophole.
  • Watching the Twitch stream where Christopher was playing with people over at Penny-Arcade there was a ruling that confused me; Divine Sacrifice has “Fanatic deals herself up to 3 radiant damage. Fanatic deals X targets 3 radiant damage each, where X is the amount of damage dealt to Fanatic this turn.” The person playing Fanatic asked if Fanatic hitting herself with the first of the X hits would be allowed (to help bring Fanatic down into her “danger zone”)? You said yes (agreed), but you also said that the order matters and that she should hit herself last otherwise X would update and she might have to hit allies - is that accurate, shouldn’t X update regardless of whether it was the last attack or not? Yeah, you’re right on that - the order wouldn’t matter for how many targets you’d have to hit.
  • If a Villain card gains an ability during the Phase that it’s already resolving, would they activate that ability that turn? Yes. Think of the Hero turn example of Tachyon’s HUD Goggles. You play it during your Play Phase and immediately get to play another card during that same Play Phase.
  • If the Villain character card flips during the Start Phase due to an effect from another card, after you flip the character card would you go back to resolve the Start Phase on the character card? Yes. You complete all of the phase instructions, even the ones that just came into play. [This is another contentious one - the argument against this ruling is that if you’ve resolved the character card (because it’s first in being resolved) and then move on to other cards it seems weird to backtrack because you’re not then resolving cards in the order they were played. It’s kind of a minor edge case, but is perfectly possible with Ambuscade.]
  • Which hero deck for Disparation were you most excited to revisit (my guess is Parse in terms of her old deck not really showcasing the story you’ve told with her on the podcast)? Parse was a good one for the reason you mentioned: they know who she is as a person and what her history is better now than they did back then. She definitely was “the Harpy of this set” in terms of how difficult it was to “crack” her, developmentally. Adam was most excited about Visionary (for reasons that were spoilers at the time of recording, but are probably obvious if you check out her update in the campaign). Her EE deck was kind of bland and static for a psychic, so they’re excited about what they’ve done with her. Christopher likes the work done with K.N.Y.F.E. to really sell her straightforward, brutal brawler vibe. Adam is also very happy with the Ennead. He felt that their EE deck just didn’t have much room in it for characterization and there are 3 arts for every character in there now.
  • Why do Ra and Anubis have more individual power while the Ennead seem to need to work together? Aren’t they all the same class of being? Only kind of in Anubis’ case - he’s not a human avatar of one of these “gods”; he is a “god”. As for the others, humans have different strengths and abilities between individuals. Christopher calls out chat as saying that he believes that it would take several of them to defeat him in a sword fight as an example. Beyond that, Adam points out that there’s a level of scaling involved in a game that doesn’t necessarily map directly to the characters in the comics, although it is based on it - which is in turn based on the myths. Ra was the preeminent deity in Egypt, at one point his worship fell out of fashion in favor of the Ennead of Heliopolis, eventually their worship is supplanted by this new guy Horus, which is later identified as being an aspect of Ra.
  • Has there ever been a notable recurring Gorgon villain or do they all die too soon? There’s Lydia who’s an ally. There’s certainly, in that era, a “leader” of some Gorgon faction that’s causing problems, but it’s not anybody who ever gains traction or sticks around for terribly long. Even “faction” might be pushing things. They’re a lot more secretive/solitary than, say, werewolves who have the whole “pack” thing going on. In the myths you usually just have the one gorgon who sets up a lair or a trio of them (depending on which myth you’re looking at). You’re not going to have a bunch of Gorgons working together on some big thing. They just hide away in the shadows doing their thing, which might involve being in communication with each other as they work on whatever their schemes are, but it’s not generally directly “working together”. All of that being said, yes there would be named Gorgon foes, but they haven’t created any specifically yet. There’s not going to be a Villain deck for them.
  • Why was Spangle allowed to appear on a deck back, but not Shadow or Scratch? Because those pets are not super important to the character backstory. Legacy’s family is incredibly important to the character and so there’s a “family photo” which includes the pet.
  • Given that you told us Adhesivist’s middle name is “Elmer”, is he embarrassed about it because it’s too mainstream for his glue hipster identity? Yes, absolutely. Christopher had also forgotten that they’d said his middle name was Elmer, but that’s great.
  • I apparently made an important discovery earlier this week regarding Miss Information’s origins. There was also a conversation on the server where DigiLuna and Cluedrew revealed to us that Citizens Pain and Gain are both dead for wordplay reasons (there are now none of either of them) What other horrible and/or amazing jokes are staring the fans in the face and not being noticed? [The things being referred to here are that Miss Information’s backstory involves the Freedom Five saving 5 strangers instead of her - she was explicitly written to be the victim of a Trolley Problem and nobody pointed this out until recently. The other is that, in the Citizens, there’s “no Pain, no Gain”.] They are absolutely not going to point out more of these. They are perfectly happy doing this and then just letting it sit. Having things like the Trolley Problem thing sit there for a decade before anybody notices it just makes the reactions around the realization all the better. There was a puzzle/ARG built into the play-mat they made for Galactic Strike Force and nobody noticed or has ever done anything about it. At this point they don’t think anybody ever will figure that one out and that’s fine. Hiding something that well is fun for them on its own.
  • Has Wager Master ever made a bet that has destroyed another Singular Entity? They don’t think so.
  • You’ve mentioned at several points that non-Freedom Five heroes have taken up temporary residency in Freedom Tower. Sky-Scraper is the premiere example you always use, and we know Setback hung out there for a while after his apartment burned down, but who else had a stay there? Chrono-Ranger, briefly. Parse. Chuck. Janet. [I’m guessing this is police chief Chuck Callahan and Janet Valenco of the Department of ExoEarth Integration.] It’s kind of the go-to “crashing pad” since it’s a tower with a lot of space. [Christopher throws in a “remember Recycle Ben?” which I don’t think we’d heard of before.]
  • I notice that the art on today’s Iron Legacy card reveals shows Ryan Frost of that reality, and he looks noticeably “slimmer”/smaller in scale. Any particular reasons for this change? Yeah, the EE Freedom Six AZ was covered in big blocks of ice. He’s still pretty bulky, but people haven’t seen the new Freedom Six Absolute Zero card yet, only his appearance in other arts. Over the course of the fights he’s “spending” the ice that he’s built up. It also needs to be clear that he can still move, which necessitates reducing the amount on him. Oh, spoilers - the Freedom Six variants are in this set.
  • Would there be members of other military branches in Tyler Vance’s unit after the Bunker suit was introduced? They don’t think so - he was in an army unit and it had a recurring cast for those guys. Something they wanted to do in Vertex was having different military branch versions of Bunker, but that never panned out.
  • The robot art thing got me curious, are there any decks where you memorably learned something new while researching for a drawing? Obviously Unity’s Golems don’t have to obey actual mechanics because they’re magical, but are there any decks where you had to do a ton of background work to make sure whatever you were drawing was accurate (different styles of armor, machines, real-world folklore stuff, etc.)? He learned a lot about the different historical methods of making comic art. He doesn’t really retain any of the ancillary knowledge from looking up, say, what the under side of a car looks like. He pulls up a reference image and works from that to get things vaguely correct without memorizing what it looks like.
  • Does Setback whistle elevator music when he’s in an elevator with no hold music? Yes, and he’s very tone deaf.
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