U.P.S.T.A.R.T.S. West Coast!

Hey hey hey! Back from a long hiatus and breaking (w)right back into the comic! New artist to boot, and now, a whole new team! Look for these guys after issue #50. Now, without further ado, the West Coast U.P.S.T.A.R.T.S.!

A Brief Introduction...

I’m more of a visual person, really.
Don’t you know what I mean? I mean, it’s easier for me to visualize something than to plan it out some other way. Okay, like this: crook’s in a bank vault, right? He knows the system, so he closes the door and locks it, leaving almost no way in. Some guys would be like “okay, let’s plan this out”, but me? Hell no. I “visualize” myself blasting my way through the fucking door and the punching the guy’s front teeth out of his mouth. I can see them tinkling on the floor like loose change. That’s how I work. Especially if it’s one of the Hyper Police.
By the way, my name’s Alex. At least, it used to be.
Nowadays, I go by “The Tank”. Yeah, I know, it sounds like either a wrestler or a football player. And while I watched wrestling as a kid, I never really was much into football. It actually doesn’t have a relationship to either of those things. It’s a codename.
I joined the military when I was pretty young. My parents cut off my tuition because they said my grades weren’t good enough, and my job was not enough to pay for college, so I joined up. Ended up doing really well, too. That’s until they took over.
I say “they” like it’s some crime syndicate. It’s the government. They got twisted up in themselves, and now they call us a “united nation”, but it’s all bullshit. This isn’t a democracy anymore. But I’m digressing.
Once the government got twisted, the crime bosses tried taking over. That’s when the feds started the “Hyper Police” program. Some kind of genetic testing that turned guys into super-powered police. And ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to be a “super soldier”, just like Captain America. So I joined their little program.
Turned out I was their first big success. They called me The Tank. I’ve got skin that’ll deflect a M1 Abrams shell, and enough “super strength” to lift up an old B-52. Plus, I’ve got these “bio-blast” things. I always call it my “amazing ability to blow shit up”. That’s what I use them for now.
Needless to say, I’m not in the military any more. Oh yeah, they decommissioned me a looooong time ago. And I bet they’re glad they did. Because soon after that, I found out what they had been doing before they made me. Wandered into the wrong room and found guys that looked like puddles of goo with faces…it was not pretty.
That’s when I blew the place up.
So for a while, I was on my own. A loner, fighting crime whenever I could. I always thought of myself like the Punisher back then. They fucked with me, so I fucked back. And I could fuck pretty hard. That was back when Philly was still “The City Of Brotherly LoveÔ”. They don’t call it that any more. At least I don’t.
But I found a family, thankfully. I call them the U.P.S.T.A.R.T.S. Basically, we’re a ragtag group of people who are fed up with this whole fucking regime. Scorpion calls us a double-edged sword: we fight crime, and we fight the government. Sometimes, there isn’t much of a line between the two. We’re kind of like the renegade Avengers, even though the Avengers never really existed.
When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a superhero. I wanted to have cool powers, and fight massive monsters against incredible odds. I never thought it would actually happen.
Well, it has.

The Children of the Night

Here's another supervillain team. These are all of the "darkness" themed evil-doers. Hell, they once used Slyme (aka chemical tycoon Stephan Slade)'s chemical plant to black out the sky and bring eternal night to Philadelphia! You can imagine what these terrors can do when they're teamed up!

The Isis Collective

The Isis Collective is introduced as a bunch of freakish, horrible creatures that resemble characters from Egyptin myth. Then, we find out that It's really just a bunch of twenty-somethings with too much time and too much money.

Oh, and they're all pretty much dicks.

But what secrets is The Isis Collective really hiding?

First Story Arc

Back when Tank was working for Section 66, he had two partners: Apache (Sgt. Francis Borek, who now has powers resembling the helicopter), and The Black Scorpion. It is to be revealed in Issue #3 ("Hammer of Doom"), that the evil Lord Doom has captured Black Scorpion and brainwashed him. Once Lord Doom is defeated, Black Scorpion rejoins with his old partner, Tank, and becomes a member of the U.P.S.T.A.R.T.S.

Note #1: The main reason I posted this is because Black Scorpion's picture didn't make it into the original U.P.S.T.A.R.T.S. post.

Note #2: Lord Doom (aka Aloysius Doom) was created when Rob Middlebrook (my artist) and I were talking about comic book villains. We commented that, no matter what, if your last name was "Doom", you were going to be evil. Thus, the young boy named Aloysius Doom became the evil Lord Doom.

Section 66 Continued

The leader of the Section 66 Strike Force (known as Strike Force Alpha) is Shrapnel, a very weasely man who bribed Section 66 scientists to use the Ultra Police serum on him. His speed and agility has been greatly increased, and he can generate knives, spikes, and blades like some heroes can generate energy.

Obsidian is one of the few soldiers (others include Echo) who questions Section 66 and whether what they do is right.

Section 66

Here it is, that most vile of villains, that horror of horrors...

The American Government.

Section 66 is the division of the government responsible for creating the Hyper Police and The Tank (a smaller divison of Section 66 is responsible for creating F.A.E.R.I.E. and Rumblebee). Once their first sucessful creation (Tank) went renegade and escaped, Section 66 leader Professor Wesson Smith took their formula and used it to create more and deadlier soldiers.

The Orange Dawn

In the future, there is no public transportation. The government has no money for such frivolities. Because of this, the Broad Street Subway lies under Philadelphia, abandoned.

Until now.

Two partners, Captain Alabaster and The Redman, have comandeered a subway train and have extended its reach. As modern-day pirates, they live their lives, on board The Orange Dawn.

First post: THE U.P.S.T.A.R.T.S.

Hey there, true believers! This is my first post, and an introduction to the world of "THE U.P.S.T.A.R.T.S." What's the acronym for, you say?
United
Peoples
Saving
The
Americas from the
Ravages of
The
System
This will be me introducting you to the many characters that inhabit the world of U.P.S.T.A.R.T.S., thanks to www.heromachine.com.

This first post will introduce you to our heroes:
The Tank (Based on me, of course)
Rumblebee (Based on my girlfriend, Brandi Blank)
Morphox (Based on my friend John [Space Dracula])
Gaia (Based on John's Ex-girlfriend, Kim Lodise)
The Hood (Based on my artist, Rob Middlebrook)
F.A.E.R.I.E. (Based on my very good friend, Elizabeth Peabody)
Brimstone (Based on Liz's boyfriend, Eric Tomlin)
Black Scorpion (Based on my best friend, Cory James)