Why? Because a crook broke into one of his facilities? Herschel had a lot on his plate at the time, between designing “PS238 Mark II” (aka the one under Excelsior Public School), bulding a machine to train the entire faculty (except Miss Kyle and Miss Oberon) in the basics of early childhood education, developing Doc Positron’s new lab, and, oh yeah, his wife had gone insane and was isolated in a crashed space station. 🙁
Not to mention the fact that it’s a common superhero trope that villains gain their powers by breaking into facilities designed or owned by heroes. If Tony Stark had a nickel for everytime someone stole one of his designs, he’d enough money to pay the government for the damage he caused to the Vault’s Mandroids and Guardsmen armor during the first “Armor Wars”. 🙂
Not really, his story rings false. He admits to tampering with the containment but blames Clay for not shutting down the AI properly. Isn’t it more likely his tampering woke the AI up improperly?
I feel like the real lie is “I used to be Senator Durvin”.
The truth would’ve been more like, “Senator Durvin broke into Clay Industries’ storage facility, and then into my containment unit. His inept fumbling to try to “open it” to see what was in it woke me up without safeguards. I took over his body and proceeded to enact my plan of vengeance against my creator. Which, of course, naturally included building the facility I was programmed^Wdestined to build.”
The headmaster’s already lying freely, so what’s another lie that is consistent with both the interests of the headmaster and the late Senator Durvin? Surely this student will believe it all. She is, after all, one of the best students in the academy.
With the exception of the Rainmaker and Zodon, who don’t fit the classic mold of supervillainy (contrary to what Zodon might think) this is the closest “PS238” has come to an origin story for a villain on par with Dr. Doom or the Green Goblin. We don’t really know anything about Dr. Irons before he was caught, since he was pretty much a liar and manipulator, none of the Revenant’s enemies got origins, Near Mint, Charles Brigman and Beryl didn’t get an origin story and if the Septos got a backstory beyond “they want to turn humans into Septos to reproduce”, it’s buried in Prospero’s ciphers. Not even Phillipe von Fogg and his wife had their origin shown (maybe because Aaron wants to stay on speaking terms with Phil and Kaja Foglio 😛 ).
What’s more, there were hints, red herrings (especially in the “PS238” RPG, where the same origin is included, but the culprit is an anonymous, disgruntled text book salesman, whose curriculum had been rejected for PS238) and a build up of mystery. This is comparable to the mystery of the original Hobgoblin’s identity, only better since it wasn’t screwed up by Jim Owsley/Priest and Tom DeFalco not knowing who Roger Stern intended the Hobgoblin to be. 😛
Notwithstanding anything else the character might have done before or since, this origin story doesn’t seem villainous at all. It could easily belong to a hero.
Amazon apparently has some of them – I didn’t check full listings. Might be mostly resellers. Hilarious side note: the address http://www.ps238.com/store.htm is registered and has spam on it. I would like to see the robot code that decided that address was worth parking on.
Well, that cat’s out of the bag, so I can comment on The Headmaster, aka Senator Walter Durvin. 🙂
Originally Durvin appeared to be an anti-superhuman bigot, ala Senator Kelly from “X-Men”. As time went on it became clearer that his animus was mostly towards Principal Cranston (who had not been revealed to be a disgraced ex-President yet). As for the Headmaster, he mostly appeared as a voice, heard over the Centurions’ comms (usually because the Flea was eavesdropping on them). While Alejandro seems like he has trouble focusing his attention (maybe he has the proportional attention span of an insect the size of a small boy? :P), he should get credit for doggedly pursuing the Centurions, and learning more and more about the Headmaster. Without Flea’s help, 84 and Zodon would probably have had more trouble handling Beryl and Thunderclash. Poly Mer was there for comic relief, while Alejandro brought his A-game, including wisecracks and taunts to throw the villains off their game, just like Spidey or the Blue Beetle!
So, now that we all know who The Headmaster is, there are two pieces of business. First, someone needs to make a Transformers joke about how cool G1 Headmasters are or about how lame The Headmaster from “Transformers: Animated” was. Secondly, I still can’t speak about the Headmaster’s plans, including why he formed Praetorian Academy, including his methods of recruiting students using felonies like kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, assault, abuse of minors and torture. The Headmaster has a very nefarious plan, and all I can say is that in order to explain it to Lady Alexandra von Fogg, it will require him to show her a, um, educational film. Yes, that educational film. 😉
Pfft, that’s nothing. You should have seen FDR in Roy Thomas’ “All Star Squadron”; the guy took the total weirdness of the Mystery Men in stride, while still waging World War II and having a mistress on the side! Compared to that, having a supervillain origin story is nothing!
Clay should be feeling mighty stupid about now…
Why? Because a crook broke into one of his facilities? Herschel had a lot on his plate at the time, between designing “PS238 Mark II” (aka the one under Excelsior Public School), bulding a machine to train the entire faculty (except Miss Kyle and Miss Oberon) in the basics of early childhood education, developing Doc Positron’s new lab, and, oh yeah, his wife had gone insane and was isolated in a crashed space station. 🙁
Not to mention the fact that it’s a common superhero trope that villains gain their powers by breaking into facilities designed or owned by heroes. If Tony Stark had a nickel for everytime someone stole one of his designs, he’d enough money to pay the government for the damage he caused to the Vault’s Mandroids and Guardsmen armor during the first “Armor Wars”. 🙂
Really, this is why there’s a SIITS-9000.
Not really, his story rings false. He admits to tampering with the containment but blames Clay for not shutting down the AI properly. Isn’t it more likely his tampering woke the AI up improperly?
I feel like the real lie is “I used to be Senator Durvin”.
The truth would’ve been more like, “Senator Durvin broke into Clay Industries’ storage facility, and then into my containment unit. His inept fumbling to try to “open it” to see what was in it woke me up without safeguards. I took over his body and proceeded to enact my plan of vengeance against my creator. Which, of course, naturally included building the facility I was programmed^Wdestined to build.”
The headmaster’s already lying freely, so what’s another lie that is consistent with both the interests of the headmaster and the late Senator Durvin? Surely this student will believe it all. She is, after all, one of the best students in the academy.
Classic supervillain origin story! Nice. 🙂
With the exception of the Rainmaker and Zodon, who don’t fit the classic mold of supervillainy (contrary to what Zodon might think) this is the closest “PS238” has come to an origin story for a villain on par with Dr. Doom or the Green Goblin. We don’t really know anything about Dr. Irons before he was caught, since he was pretty much a liar and manipulator, none of the Revenant’s enemies got origins, Near Mint, Charles Brigman and Beryl didn’t get an origin story and if the Septos got a backstory beyond “they want to turn humans into Septos to reproduce”, it’s buried in Prospero’s ciphers. Not even Phillipe von Fogg and his wife had their origin shown (maybe because Aaron wants to stay on speaking terms with Phil and Kaja Foglio 😛 ).
What’s more, there were hints, red herrings (especially in the “PS238” RPG, where the same origin is included, but the culprit is an anonymous, disgruntled text book salesman, whose curriculum had been rejected for PS238) and a build up of mystery. This is comparable to the mystery of the original Hobgoblin’s identity, only better since it wasn’t screwed up by Jim Owsley/Priest and Tom DeFalco not knowing who Roger Stern intended the Hobgoblin to be. 😛
So wouldn’t the Senator (or ex-Senator) be noticed as having gone missing?
See previous comment by Lady Von Fogg about Clever Android duplicates.
Notwithstanding anything else the character might have done before or since, this origin story doesn’t seem villainous at all. It could easily belong to a hero.
Side note: Does anyone know the real URL of the store? Or ANYWHERE to buy the floppy or trade versions of the last few issues?
Amazon apparently has some of them – I didn’t check full listings. Might be mostly resellers. Hilarious side note: the address http://www.ps238.com/store.htm is registered and has spam on it. I would like to see the robot code that decided that address was worth parking on.
Hey Aaron, do you have a better answer for Colin?
Try http://www.nobleknight.com. The other Aaron might be able to hook you up.
http://dragoneers.com/webcomicsoffline/ps238/
Hope this can be of help.
Well, that cat’s out of the bag, so I can comment on The Headmaster, aka Senator Walter Durvin. 🙂
Originally Durvin appeared to be an anti-superhuman bigot, ala Senator Kelly from “X-Men”. As time went on it became clearer that his animus was mostly towards Principal Cranston (who had not been revealed to be a disgraced ex-President yet). As for the Headmaster, he mostly appeared as a voice, heard over the Centurions’ comms (usually because the Flea was eavesdropping on them). While Alejandro seems like he has trouble focusing his attention (maybe he has the proportional attention span of an insect the size of a small boy? :P), he should get credit for doggedly pursuing the Centurions, and learning more and more about the Headmaster. Without Flea’s help, 84 and Zodon would probably have had more trouble handling Beryl and Thunderclash. Poly Mer was there for comic relief, while Alejandro brought his A-game, including wisecracks and taunts to throw the villains off their game, just like Spidey or the Blue Beetle!
So, now that we all know who The Headmaster is, there are two pieces of business. First, someone needs to make a Transformers joke about how cool G1 Headmasters are or about how lame The Headmaster from “Transformers: Animated” was. Secondly, I still can’t speak about the Headmaster’s plans, including why he formed Praetorian Academy, including his methods of recruiting students using felonies like kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, assault, abuse of minors and torture. The Headmaster has a very nefarious plan, and all I can say is that in order to explain it to Lady Alexandra von Fogg, it will require him to show her a, um, educational film. Yes, that educational film. 😉
Should I update my links page? It still has the malletspace address but it takes you to the nodwick home page.
also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXJuJQVrgbI
Who wants their own blob of nano goo?
Hrm. The politicians in this universe seem to be every bit as unflappable as the kids.
Pfft, that’s nothing. You should have seen FDR in Roy Thomas’ “All Star Squadron”; the guy took the total weirdness of the Mystery Men in stride, while still waging World War II and having a mistress on the side! Compared to that, having a supervillain origin story is nothing!