Mr. Big critiques Pyrepower's plan

By request, I am going to seriously address the recent posts from Pyrepower about hero capture. Disregarding her highly questionable motives for engaging in such activities, let's review the important points that the caper highlights:

1. Knowledge. Her target was analyzed for weaknesses (like breathing) and those weaknesses were exploited.
2. Motivation. In "Full Metal Jacket", Gunnery Sergeant Hartman points out what "one motivated Marine and his rifle can do". The trap was laid and sprung with precision.
3. Completeness. From baiting the trap in multiple ways, to springing it, to following up, every phase of the plan was accounted for.

That said: yes, the plan was amateurish overall. But you know what? She baited the hook for two amateur heroes. She's playing at the level she's at, and knows her limits.

That was the good news. Here's some further commentary.

Fire vs. speedsters. Hurricane Hal did a very nice guest spot awhile back, and talked about the slipstream that speedsters can manipulate. Being able to ignite your whole body on fire, especially in an enclosed space, is a great counter not just against being attacked, but against someone who breathes. If necessary, Pyrepower could quickly overwhelm any oxygen-dependent speedster. But she should absolutely know beforehand if her opponent needs to breathe.

That said, you can still pit your control over fire against their control over the slipstream. If you win, they're going to painfully burn their hands if they attack you. This is a risky thing to gamble on, and you shouldn't count on it as Plan A. In this case, she didn't, but she might have.

The necessity of a custom pit trap. Digging a new trap was probably a waste of time, if a suitable candidate location could have been found. Maybe one was searched for, maybe not. Maybe digging it was just an exercise in power control. But being able to control the location of your caper - and just as importantly preventing a search of "likely locations" by the authorities - is itself a smart move.

The expendability of lairs. Pyrepower's personal lair should now be considered compromised, and I hope she fully realizes that. Any hero she takes there should be assumed to be wearing a transmitter, recorder, or similar equipment. Even if they're unconscious, or there's radio jamming in place, the technology exists to narrow down the location enough that a determined search could find it within a day or so.

Guide update from Pyrepower: how to successfully use misdirection when capturing heroes

HEE HEE HEE you haters.

As an addendum to yesterday's guide for capturing hunky speedster boys, I want to talk about misdirection. Stage magicians use misdirection all the time. Mr. Big says politicians do too. So why can't I?

First, let's say that ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICALLY you plan to capture some superheroes, and you put your entire plan up on a forum that you know heroes have been reading. Heroes like Kid Cumulus, who wrote in and tipped off the boss.

Second, let's say that the hostage scenario is pretty obvious. I mean, come on, Mr. Big had me watch a series of Republic serials and basically said "don't be that stupid".

Third, let's say that you assume the hero will try to escape the trap when you aren't looking. So what do you do? You have to be there the whole time.

So I went through Mr. Big's movie collection. He has like a billion DVDs or something. And I happened to notice "Saw". Spoilers, people: the killer is in the room the whole time.

So let's say, again hypothetically, that I am the hostage at the bottom of the pit. Sure enough, he's immediately wary. That's when the charges I set at the top of the pit go off, and he's blown in. I could tell him there's a real hostage, and I have photos and his driver's license and everything to prove it. But I know from experience that he needs to breathe and I don't, so instead of that nonsense, I flooded the pit with gas. Down he goes, trussed up he gets (remember, I am pretending to be tied up, so there's all this chain laying around), and I measure out an injection of anesthetic like the boss taught me. No sense taking chances.

Next stop: the lair! Well, a lair anyway, not the boss's lair. What do you think I am, stupid?

HEE HEE HEE

Guide update from Pyrepower: how to capture superheroes!

Hee hee hee.

Pyrepower here! Mr. Big is still away. So I'm writing the guide still!

Today is our ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICAL methods for capturing two hunky superhero boys: The Philly Fleetfoot and Rail Runner. By sheer coincidence both are speedsters, so we will be using the same tactics against both.

First, we consider weaknesses. What are they observed to be weak against? Well, neither can get out of a really deep pit, so we have something. We need a pit! What do we have for powers? Well let's say fire manipulation. Rock would be really tough to get out of, and the melting point of most silicates is about 1200 degrees Celsius. Super awesome trivia note! The Space Shuttle's tiles can absorb about this much heat without burning your hand.

Next, test that you can produce that much heat by obtaining a sample of rock and burning it with your powers. If this test fails, think of a new plan.

Let's assume your test is successful. Bring along a stopwatch so you can tell how long it takes to slag the sample. Divide that time by the volume of the sample, then multiply by the volume of the pit you want to dig. Assume 20' by 20' by 30' deep.

Next, you need a spot where you can dig this pit uninterrupted. Check a map of your area and find some good ambush points. Like an abandoned subway tunnel. Your digging puts out an awful lot of heat and light.

You want a hostage. Obtain one, tie him up, then put them at the bottom of the pit. They must be tied up securely so they can't escape. Put a rope ladder at the top of the pit. When your hero shows up, they'll see the ladder and go "cool, a ladder" and try to unfurl it to the bottom. They'll see that the hostage is tied up, and figure out that they have to go down and help him out. So your rope ladder should be set up to give way the second they get down there. For example, radio-controlled explosive bolts in the rock.

At this point, you should have your very own superhero. Now you need to make an appearance. Tell them that if they untie the hostage, you'll lower a rope and pull him up as long as the hero stays in the hole. Escort the hostage out (blindfolded so he can't lead the cops back to you). That gives the hero some time to start feeling depressed and stuff, so when you show up he'll be more willing to go along with whatever, y'know, you happen to think up next.

I think it'll work!

Hee hee hee.

Discovering a hero's secret identity

Some of you wrote in about my comment on Illumina and "the usual people" trying to discover her identity. This is as important for villains as heroes, so let's talk about what sort of information people use to discover a super's identity.

Face recognition software

This is a pretty new option for me, though kids these days are familiar with it. When I was growing up, computers were a toy for academics and big companies and the military. These days you can keep one in your pocket. Similar oldie villains should really wise up to what's going on in this space.

Basically, there's face recognition software developed by people like Facebook and Google. And there's dedicated groups of super-hunters who do nothing but snap up old high school yearbooks and so forth, scan the photos, and upload them to a central server to be analyzed by this software. They compare pictures of known supers to the database, hoping for a match. This has gotten a lot easier with Google's image search feature, where you can just Photoshop a mask onto someone's yearbook picture and see if you get any hits.

Since everything you put online tends to stay there in some form, you can probably be found if you've ever had a civilian Facebook or something similar. Just let this be a warning if you were thinking of starting a page: never put your real face up there, ever.

Activity Triangulation

As I wrote in my guide on Lair placement and size, a supervillain's lair can be traced back to them if it's at the center of their sphere of activity. The same goes for superheroes. I talked a little about this on my article on Stage 2, but it holds true to a lesser extent for more powerful supers.

The general rule is that the more powerful your movement abilities, the harder it is to triangulate you. There's an adrenaline junkie named Exodus who's doing time in Riverbend maximum security. He can go anywhere in the world, because he's a teleporter. The only reason he's in jail is to impress the mundane prisoners with his exploits, and score points with prison gangs by smuggling things in for them. Supposedly he's got a whole stockpile of stuff buried in an abandoned mine - odds are good that they will never, ever find his real base.

You can start by getting a map of the city your hero is in, and getting a supply of pins and note cards. Start tracking sightings on the map. Put a pin onto each sighting's location, along with the date and two times - as accurately as you have them - for when there was an incident there, and when the hero responded to it. Once you have about three dozen data points, look at the data you have. Start drawing connecting boundaries on your map - "always takes at least 30 minutes to reach these spots", for example - and try to draw narrower and narrower circles as your data collection gets better.

If necessary, create incidents of your own. The ideal incident will be one which the hero feels compelled to respond to, and at times when the hero is likely to be in a familiar place - i.e. the place you want to track down. Only you know your own hero enough to determine these things, but in general, a couple hours after a major disaster or combat is the most ideal time to rouse a hero from their lair. You can set up an incident on the boundaries you drew earlier, to test the validity of your assumptions about travel time.

Tracking devices

These aren't useful for a lot of reasons, so don't rely on them unless you already have the expertise to use them professionally. Here's the problems:

1. Like clothes, a tracking device is usually a lot less durable than the super you attach it to. If he's got flame powers or something, it's going to be trashed well before you ever get a line on his home base.
2. Most villains don't know how to follow a radio signal properly.
3. Of those that do, many can't keep up with a fast-flying super.

Some villains have better luck with burst-transmission tracking devices, of the sort used to track animal migration patterns. Companies like Telonics make devices that use GPS and the Iridium satellite network which could be used to track someone almost anywhere in the world. Finding a way to attach one of these to your superheroic nemesis without alerting him is left as an exercise for the reader.

Military groups like the Grasscutters are fully equipped to utilize these methods. They have tiny transmitters that they shoot onto their targets, along with a topical anesthetic mixed with DMSO to neutralize the sensation of the transmitter after the initial hit. If the super is busy fighting, he may never notice it.

Superheroes of Note: Asiri

Due to requests from international readers, I'm going to call attention to the leader of the Lagos Guard, a Nigerian super-team, and their leader.

Asiri

The superheroes and supervillains in Africa operate on a very different dynamic than those in America and Canada. According to my African contacts, they act more like Feudal lords and knights, patrolling a given area of turf and protecting the people who live there. The "hero" and "villain" distinction is a little looser, but mainly comes down to whether you're benevolent or not.

The Lagos Guard are the only heroic super-team operating in the city of Lagos. The city has between 17 and 20 million people and is located on the southwestern coast of Nigeria. It's a port city and is significant to the economy of the entire country. The Lagos Guard was formed to act as the city's super-protectors, and they deal a beat-down to anyone who tries to muscle in.

Asiri is the leader of the Guard. He (or she, nobody's sure, but I'll stick with "he" unless corrected) is a shapeshifter and a pretty powerful Stage 4 Child of Eve. He's an infiltration specialist and apparently has some military and command experience.

Past

According to statements made by Asiri and others, he is a member of the Yoruba people, found in the southwestern Nigerian region. His accented English suggests he was educated in America at some point, and returned to his native home later. His combat doctrine suggests that he spent some time in the Israeli armed forces.

Asiri claims that his "spiritual self" was empowered by his god and that is responsible for the source of his powers. My Lagos contact tells me that his origin story is a variation of Yoruba religious beliefs and essentially the same as several other local supers, so whether he sincerely believes it, or just claims what he does to hold the support of the people in the region, is unknown.

Position

Aside from being the team leader, Asiri is apparently also the team ninja. His shapeshifting powers let him adopt the form of anyone his enemy trusts, or at least will overlook.

In combat, Asiri will either use his powers to emulate an enemy's trusted subordinates and sow confusion, or transform into a monstrous form and fight on the front lines.

Personality

Asiri is a tough, no-nonsense sort of super. His military training, personal life, and education all point to a guy on a mission. His teammates, and commentators who have seen the Guard on action, report that he doesn't really have an "off" switch - he's always doing the job, and always serious.

Powers

Asiri can shift any or all of his body into any reasonably biological form. He can copy anything he's personally familiar with, or invent a shape on the fly. Since his strength, speed, and other physical traits are based on his body's composition, he can adjust his physical abilities as well as his form.

He can gain or lose significant amounts of mass. This isn't a super big deal for Stage 4 - find anyone with a serious enough healing factor, cut off their finger, then ask yourself just how it grew back. Asiri just does it a lot faster than many supers.

It's said that he's a student of psychology, theology, and mythology, and uses his education to construct forms designed to terrify specific targets, or to manipulate them. Specific information is scarce on the ground, for obvious reasons, but it seems plausible.

Problems

Asiri's biggest problem at this point is his disconnect from humanity, especially mundanes. If he has a home life, friends, lovers, or anything else, he's never given any evidence of it. To some villains, this sounds like an advantage - no attachments means no vulnerabilities. In a hero's case, though, it means he's got to come up with his own motives for fighting, and he's unlikely to feel any compassion for people he can't connect to.

As the leader of the Lagos Guard, he has a level of visibility and accountability that makes it possible to track him down, or at least find a date and time where you know he'll have to be.

Superheroes of Note: Illumina

Not every hero is a brick or a strong-man. There are some heroes who have a purity of heart, a strength of will, and an indomitable courage.

These are the heroes who, by Odin, piss me off more than anyone else in the world.

Illumina

This lady has been around for only a few years, but she has a scary, scary power. The only thing that keeps her from being the strongest super on the planet, as far as I can tell, is that she doesn't want to be. Instead, she's made it her life's work to help people in need, redeem the "lost" (you and me, folks), and otherwise go around being an interfering busybody.

Past

Illumina claims that she's an angel sent by God to Earth to save the planet, so uh, yeah. I guess that puts her origin story in the book of Genesis. More seriously, nobody's sure about her prior to her advent as a super. The usual suspects have been working to ID her, since she doesn't bother wearing a mask, but there's been no matches yet.

Position

Illumina seems to prefer the team medic role when she works with others. She'll heal anyone who's injured, protect people from attack, that sort of thing. She likes bold, self-sacrificing sorts of moves. When operating solo, she's fully capable of fighting at Stage 4 levels. She's primarily a physical fighter at these times, rather than using energy blasts or force fields.

Personality

She really is the nicest, sweetest girl you'll ever meet. She's got that calm attitude that comes from being able to dish out a beat-down to anyone, but she's pretty non-violent. She gives off that martial artist vibe, so I think someone trained her at some point.

It's pathetically easy to take advantage of her better nature, but she'll always tell you she forgives you, and she doesn't seem to hold it against you. It's weird. I keep waiting for her to just snap. I can't really hate her either, though I really have tried.

Powers

Illumina's primary power is terrifying. She can jack powers from defeated supers - those who have been exhausted and injured - but the jack is permanent. That super goes back down to Stage 0 and stays there. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it never wears off. She apparently can't adopt everyone's powers, so not everyone is vulnerable, but still.

Aside from that, she's able to impose a healing factor on other supers, even mundanes. This is her go-to power for most encounters.

She's picked up a package of secondary abilities over the few years she's been in operation - always from villains who went and actually killed people. I think that's kind of her line that you don't cross, because she can heal anyone who isn't already dead and so probably doesn't care.

Problems

The biggest restraint on Illumina, right now, is Illumina. She's unwilling to siphon powers from people she thinks can be redeemed (which is a lot of people), and she won't hurt anyone unless they're actually hurting someone else at the time.

I made it clear to her during our last run-in that I wasn't about to turn goody-goody for anyone, but I was smart enough to talk that shit after I got out of her trap. I don't know how our next encounter will go, and I don't plan to find out.

She's clearly a nutcase for acting like she's an angel, but that delusion hasn't affected any of her other thought processes.

Apparently she's in a romantic relationship with a Polish super, alias Scrapper, who operates in New York state. He manipulates iron, which is cool, but he's not at her power level. Threatening him to get to her is a possibility, but you better have balls of iron yourself if you try it.

Superheroes of Note: Bluescreen

Today's hero is another well-known, well-respected super. Villains hate him, but at least we can trust him to be consistent.

Bluescreen

For anyone who's been living under a rock for the last ten years, Bluescreen is a nationally registered law enforcement officer with ACTION, former astrophysicist, and professional superhero. His eyes glow blue, and a similar light radiates from the interior of his body - nose, mouth, even a faint trace from his skin.

If you watch television, you've seen this guy. Despite the glow, he's the public face of law enforcement's superhuman division these days, what with the American All-Stars collapsing. He also makes guest appearances on shows like "CSI". He's appeared on "Cosmos" with Neil deGrasse Tyson, as a science consultant on superpowers.

Past

His bio claims that he's a former astrophysicist who worked at a radio observatory. One day the facility was struck by something, which he thinks was an alien radio transmission, and the computers and electronics blew out. He claims to have lost consciousness, and when he came around he was glowing. After discovering his powers, he joined the cops out of a sense of civic responsibility.

Position

Bluescreen is the brick on any team he's a part of, thanks to his force fields. He's got a lot of experience in the field since joining up with ACTION. He's pretty intelligent, so they usually put him in command in the field. He's got a knack for diplomacy and conflict resolution, which helps.

He loves any chance to get back into science, so if there's someone else who can take charge, he'll usually step aside and fall into the role of science consultant and adviser.

Personality

Bluescreen is motivated by a sense of duty to society. In a recent interview, he says he was inspired by classic space opera and sci-fi serials depicting heroes who save civilization. As a science fiction fan, he found himself drawn to astronomy and astrophysics from a young age.

He tends to get caught up in his role. He's definitely more flamboyant and larger-than-life when acting as a superhero, when compared to his public statements when not crimefighting. Seriously, the guy talks like a suit when on camera: "The Meyers legislation offers the most promising reduction in recidivism among Stage 2 offenders, which is why I urge the Senate to send it to the subcommittee immediately for consideration." Now compare that to: "Scourge of Seattle! Stand down, or fall down - choose quickly!"

He's definitely a straight shooter. If he says you're going to walk out of the bank in trade for the hostages, you'll walk out. He's been known to put up force fields to keep snipers from shooting villains while talking things out. That said, if you betray his trust, he will screw your life up. Geode found this out the hard way by hurting some hostages. One twelve-minute beatdown later, he was unconscious and Bluescreen didn't have a scratch on him.

Powers

Bluescreen can create and reshape translucent blue force fields around his body. The closer the field is to him, the stronger and more controllable it becomes. The Transhuman Capability Catalog tentatively assigns him as TCC F12, unified electromagnetic force control, but there's definitely some weird shit that he does which isn't electromagnetic.

He's impressively skilled at shaping his fields. We've seen him do any or all of the following things:

• Flight, by levitating his body via force field.
• Personal armor and defensive barriers to protect himself and others and provide temporary life support.
• Force blades and edged shapes to cut through tough objects.
• "Compression bubbles", consisting of a spherical force field wrapped around a volume of air. The field is shrunk, greatly increasing the pressure inside. When he releases it, the blast of air causes tremendous outward pressure.

Bluescreen typically makes nonlethal attacks, either using field-enhanced strength or compression bubbles. He reserves his force blades for inanimate objects, vehicles, and the like.

Problems

He's a well-known G-man and basically will never have a secret identity ever again thanks to his body's glow.

He's put away a few powerful villains, who I know from personal experience are itching for payback. If they ever team up to take him down, it's going to be a legendary fight.

Superheroes of Note: Mack Atlas

Since I talked about several supervillains of note, some of you wrote in to ask about the heroic side of the equation - in other words, what heroes are out there, and what's "the best of the best"? I know what you really want to know - "is my hero a world-beater or a wimp" - but I'll answer anyway, if only because some of these guys deserve a shout-out.

Mack Atlas

This guy is not a hero in the conventional sense - he doesn't fight villains (or anyone else) and he doesn't really stop crimes in progress. That said, he's one of the world's best and most renowned superhumans on the side of law.

Let's just say this right now: Mack is probably the world's strongest man. There is no weight he has been unable to lift so far. Everything he's ever failed at lifting failed because it broke under its own weight, not because he was unable to provide leverage. When properly reinforced, he's been capable of lifting battleships and moving (small) mountains.

Mack works with California's Metahuman Task Force (MTF). The state of California has been a model for superhuman relations, and I wish their program would go nationwide. Basically, the MTF hires supers, then does everything it can to let them focus their powers and ignore the small stuff. MTF members don't pay taxes, get preferred parking, a million other little benefits that basically let them show up and do their stuff.

Past

The MTF worked with Federal and state agencies to bury their employees' pasts, for privacy. So what little is known about Mack is what the man himself has said. He was apparently born and raised in California. He's about 42 chronological years old (based on some savvy analysis of musical tastes and cultural touchstones, done by our late lamented Professor Pulsar) and looks about 20.

Mack is one of the charter members of the MTF. There are no reports of his activities prior to the formation of that group, which is surprising because he's a freakishly built guy and couldn't really hide if he wanted to.

Position

Mack is the MTF's go-to guy for construction, repair, and rescue work. He has decades of experience in lifting heavy stuff and avoiding the secondary effects of doing so, like triggering cave-ins. He's not a combat type by any means and avoids fighting.

When coordinating rescue efforts, Mack usually likes someone else to give the orders, but he'll advise and make suggestions as needed. He wants to be up close to where things need doing, and says that a director of operations should have some distance to be able to see the whole scene.

Personality

He's an outgoing, likable guy who enjoys talking. He's one of the most respected supers on the planet because of his workmanlike attitude and refusal to get sucked into hero-vs-villain struggles, politics, or other similar bullshit.

Mack apparently has a girlfriend, but doesn't talk about her. That said, I am pretty sure that any villain who found her and hurt her would be lucky to be caught by a hero. If that guy got caught by the rest of us, we'd see to it that he deeply regretted doing that shit. Nobody wants Mack to come looking for a fight.

Powers

Mack Atlas is classified by the Transhuman Capability Catalog as TCC Q3. His body has some unknown substance bonded to the cells in a symbiotic relationship. He has incredible amounts of energy and frankly terrifying levels of physical strength and durability. If he's not Stage 5, then he's definitely at the very high end of Stage 4.

He has been known to tank 120mm howitzer shells to the face, and survived a bombardment from an American battleship unscathed (no, they weren't aiming at him deliberately). He's fallen from orbit, had a mountain collapse on him, and derailed a freight train by punching it. Most villains are grateful that he just loves to lift and fix things, because if he got a hold of one of us, that would be the end of that.

Problems

Mack is a very nice guy, and hates to see people get hurt. Villains have threatened civilians to get him to let them escape, and thankfully for them nobody got hurt. He can definitely be manipulated by threatening innocent bystanders.

He's also nearsighted, which is very weird. The super-mutation normally fixes problems like that, but not in his case. His regenerative powers keep trying to grow cells over any contact lenses, so he has to resort to glasses to see clearly. This is by far the most hilarious thing a lot of villains have seen in a long time.

The Face Heel Turn - relationships with heroes

Some villains have asked me about relations with their heroes - sexual attraction, interest in them as a friend, or whatever. Usually this comes down to "how do I turn my hero into a villain like me?"

This is usually the wrong question to ask. Flip that shit around and ask yourself: "under what circumstances would I stop being a villain and start being a hero?"

In lucha libre, the tecnicos and rudos are the good guy and bad guy wrestlers. American professional wrestling has "face" and "heel" for good and bad guys. The trap you might be falling into is identifying too closely with "good guy" and "bad guy" here, because that "face" and "heel" opposition is basically just a marketing gimmick devised by wrestling promoters. Any time there's a "good" and "bad" side, "good" is expected to win because that's how society rolls. But villains aren't necessarily "bad". We do our own thing, for our own reason. You have to remember that heroes are the same way. They hunt villains and stop crime not because they're some sort of innately moral, virtuous people, but for as many different motives as we have.

The question you should be asking, instead, is: "is the hero-villain dynamic going to stand in the way of what we want?" The answer, generally, is: not unless you've made the conflict personal. And sometimes you can even get around that.

What do I mean by personal? Kidnapping family or friends. Death threats to loved ones. Bombed homes or the workplace of a secret identity. Outing each other's secret identity. That sort of shit. If that's the level you took it to, do not expect to be on cordial terms any time soon.

That said: there's plenty of times when the good looking villain is giving the D to the attractive heroine, and I don't mean the Death ray. I know of heroes and villains who meet for coffee - each pretending not to know who the other is. There are some who are bitter rivals in costume and good friends in their civilian identities.

Your challenges in building this sort of relationship are finding out if your nemesis is interested, and broaching the subject. Supers, as a rule, feel a certain alienation from mundanes. We can do things they can't, and vice versa. We share more with each other, despite our moral views, than we'll share with mundane allies of our particular viewpoints. This means that once you form such a relationship, it will probably be self-sustaining, provided neither of you throw a monkey wrench into it. Well, at that point, you guys were nemeses already, so it's back to business as usual.

Is your nemesis interested?

This is hard to gauge. You have to separate your own feelings about the matter from what you're getting from your hero. The easiest way to do this is to ask a few trusted friends if they see anything between you. Maybe your hero hesitates before attacking. Maybe he or she has let you off the hook more than other villains. Maybe he or she seems more receptive to your dialogues during a caper. That sort of thing.

A sub-issue is: does your nemesis want the same thing you do? Maybe you're an attractive female villain and really just want someone to talk shop with, and your male hero seems most likely to understand you, but when he gets home at night, all he can think about is your ass. This is not really going to work out, because he'll misinterpret your interest, and you will probably misinterpret his.

How do you broach the subject?

Assuming you have some confidence that your hero is interested, you should express interest of your own subtly, in stages. Get a little flirtier. Point out the couples at the coffee shop. Say things like "only you understand me." Put out those careful feelers.

You'll know if your hero is interested if he or she keeps up with your signs of interest. Whatever signals you're giving off, expect to see some of the same kind coming back from the hero. Again, feedback from a trusted source is really helpful here.

Never, ever trust the newspapers to accurately report what's going on here, by the way. "Sparks fly between dueling superhumans" is a story intended to sell papers, not describe reality. Magazines like "People", "Secret", and "Masked" routinely run stories insinuating non-existent relationships. A few years ago I was being linked romantically with Titania. I want nothing to do with that woman, and the fact that we're both size-shifters and "that means something" is bullshit.

So in conclusion - get a wingman or best girlfriend. Work out what you want, look for signs of interest, and gradually float trial balloons. Maybe it'll work out, and maybe not. You're not getting any younger, but you are getting older at a dramatically slower rate, so don't worry! You have time.

Q&A: Monologues and the Hero

DDT asked me a pointed question during our July 4 outing: when and why should a villain monologue at the hero?

I covered the basics of presentation and showmanship here, but we'll specifically talk about when a villain and a hero verbally spar.

First, if the hero isn't doing much except letting you talk, then he's not actively working to stop you. Sure, he might be stalling for time, thinking of a cunning plan, charging up a power, or waiting for the cops to show up, but he's not doing anything to you at the moment.

Second, the hero is the ideal audience on which to test out your theatrics. If you can intimidate a super-powered being, whatever you just said should scare the shorts off of mundanes. Take your "A" material and try it out on a hero. If he's unimpressed, it's probably not the best you can do - or maybe it is, in which case monologues are not for you. Grats, you found that much out at least.

Third, the hero may feel tempted to talk back. If he does, he may inadvertently reveal some useful information. Just be sure that you don't!

The danger of talking while on a caper is that you'll accidentally leak something you didn't mean to talk about. Controlling this tendency during your monologue is vital! If you can't, shut your mouth and keep villainizing. But if you can, the hero often feels compelled to respond in time, and that presents an opportunity to learn something interesting.

Q&A: Influences

Today we're taking a different sort of Question and Answer. I get a lot of comments and private messages that basically ask:

Mr. Big, what are your influences?

I like to think I've been around long enough to be the influencer, but here's a short list of some of the heroes, villains, and other people who made me who I am today:

• The Marxman, you crazy Russian bastard. That head shot is what pushed me to Stage 4. Couldn't have made it without you, buddy! Good aim.
• Tokyo Rose, you're beautiful. Nobody can stop the signal.
• Mischa, you taught me a lot. Anyone can tell a bad lie. You always knew when to tell a good truth.
• B.A.K., you were one of the best. No remorse, no regrets, just a terrifically motivated dude.
• Illumina, for being the all-loving savior of humanity, and for believing that even a bad guy like me can be changed. Thanks for letting me prove you wrong and accepting it gracefully.
• Professor Pulsar, for letting me know just how important science is to an aspiring villain. You'll be missed.

If you have a favorite hero, villain, or other important person, leave a shout-out in the comments.