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[bryant]

Another Monday, another mashup. What’s the Wayback Machine got for us today, Sherman?

“Um, it’s something about ‘true believers,’ boss.”

Right! Time to mash up the Fantastic Four! The Fantastic Four are notable among superhero teams for a) being a family and b) being the most blatant example of Jack Kirby’s “use the elements as inspirations” rule ever. It’s kind of a difficult mashup in that the characters are key to the concept, so you’d almost need to use pregen PCs. Perhaps we’re talking convention games, here.

My mashup follows.

More...

Comments

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind my commenting here, since it is my chosen medium of response.

Well, I'll turn to the comics first, to reflect on the interesting recent 50s comic-melodrama Unstable Molecules and the upcoming reinvention of the Ultimate Fantastic Four. I think the Ultimate FF will probably be a shuttle crew; perhaps one of the last American shuttle crews in the Ultiverse. This allows for multi-billionaire computer tycoon Reed Richards and his fiancée Sue Storm to buy their way onto the shuttle, along with Eastern European aristocrat Victor Von Düm. Ben Grimm, New York street kid made good in the USAF, is your pilot, and 15-year-old Johnny Storm is the stowaway for good measure.

They encounter... something in orbit. Not cosmic rays, but perhaps a fleeing Skrull ship (see the latest Ultimates issue) which abducts the Five and changes them in weird ways. Von Düm bargains with the Skrulls, and isn't altered but is instead horribly scarred for his refusal. He blames Reed, blah blah.

So for weird Ultimates-style horribleness, I'd say Reed gets the ability to turn into a pile of amorphous nano-goo that can interact with any kind of computer. Sue is not just invisible, she's unnoticeable. No one but the other four who were on the shuttle (and Skrulls) can ever see her; the Skrulls' experiments with four-dimensional reality have rendered her a non-person in this timestream. She has to use mentally-generated four-dimensional force constructs to interact with our world. Ben's density is increased to the point where he can't even move under his own power anymore; Reed whips up a special exoskeleton to help him move around. Johnny's a being a pure plasma energy, doomed to an existence where he can't turn off the flame. And Victor retreats to the former Soviet satellite state of Latveria, his ancestral home, to take advantage of the best plastic surgeons the Russian Mafia can provide.

[bryant]

Nah, comment wherever you like. I dig the Morrisonian twists on the FF powers, too.

First Notion: Planetarium

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Pre-gens seem required, if the PCs are to be the FF analogues. The FF could, of course, be the villains: they could be this shadowy group suppressing the secret history of the 20th century, and the PCs would be, um, reality archaeologists of some kind... :) You'd want to change the villains' name from the Fantastic Four, of course: something related, but shorter, punchier, more ominous...

The Fantas!

Second Notion

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Somewhere in my closet is a copy of the old Fiend Folio, the one with the flumph, and the slaads, and the githyanki. And under 'E' are the four lords of elemental evil. The only one I can remember is Ogremoch, lord of evil earth, who I remember because a) he looked like a generic store-brand cousin of the Staypuft Marshmallow Man, and b) my PCs killed him. Thus saving the multi-verse from the danger of, um, evil earth. (It would seem pretty hard to further strain the credibility of the anything-goes cosmology of early 80s D&D, but the lords of elemental evil might just have done it.) Anyway. Seems like you could do something elemental and FF-like with those four baddies.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Indian mythology, in space. Four vedic warriors pilot a vimana craft beyond the shell of the world turtle, and are infused with the elemental panchabuta: prithvi (earth), jal (water), agni (fire), vayu (air) and akasha (spirit). Crap, that's five. Call in Dr. Doom. Or the kid. What's the kid's name?

[bryant]

Kid was Franklin (or, while there was a daughter, Valeria). But once you add spirit in you're almost Grant Morrison.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Quite true, but there are worse things to be. Actually, I think Morrison has a Bollywood sci-fi project in the pipe.

My LJ is full of Kirby goodness today: see also http://www.livejournal.com/users/calamityjon/535255.html

ps The Transhuman Star Wars screed over on mgrasso's LJ was sweet.