The superhero personae that each adopt in the start are (as a nod to Ileni's greek heritage, and hitting on an over arching theme of the project) Athena (Ileni) and Pallas (Zoe). Mythologically, Pallas is the name of either Athena's best friend or adoptive brother or adoptive sister, depending on the source, but the story always goes essentially the same:

Athena has a strong, nigh familial relationship with Pallas, but Pallas ends up dying as a result of Athena's actions and Athena takes on Pallas's name in honour of his/her passing, becoming Pallas Athena, or in Ileni's case, just taking on her side-kick's name and costume and carrying on in her honour. It's all kind of confusing on paper, but if I were to ever take it down in comic form it would be much less so.

The basic idea, and the reason for Zoe's existence and eventual death are to explore what a flawed, rather ill suited, person would do if they were thrust into the world of costumed heroing when really they would much rather just live as quietly as possible, but really lack any other option.

Ileni is only about 13 when she first gets her powers, which are rather undefined, but she has some sort of energy manipulation powers that allows her to fly, block attacks, fire (rather weak) energy blasts, certain degrees of super strength (she sure can crush/destroy materials, but not really lift them or anything like that) and the most obvious feature is a blue aura and change of hair and skin tones when activated. She gets these powers while out star gazing with Zoe, a 'falling star' smacks into her an integrates. She first panics, but Zoe talks her down and quickly introduces the idea of becoming heroes, superheroing having been a lifelong interest of Zoe, who loves adventure and follows the world's costumed community like most kids in our world would follow celebrities.

Clearly, at this point it's pretty clear to see that Zoe isn't entirely innocent. Being the dominant personality in the relationship, she often bullied Ileni into getting her own way as young girls often do, but she is never outright malicious or overly jealous of Ileni's powers, and is a genuine friend in her support of the girl in her times of need (even if it is to her own ends).

So from a young age, Ileni was presented with the idea of becoming a superhero, she went through with it with no real plans or ambitions other than that, all of which was really just influenced by the passion of her friend, who is now dead.

What do.

Fuelled by a mixture of guilt ("if I never got these stupid powers we could have just lead a normal life and she wouldn't have died" though it could be argued that Zoe would have died trying to play the hero anyway), duty ("Zoe would have wanted me to keep on saving people" I can't decide if Zoe would actually vocalize this or Ileni just comes to the conclusion, both have interesting psychological implications) and habit ("what else am I supposed to do with myself, I am in my early twenties with no direction in life" which is a very young, weak willed way of thinking, that shows off what a wimp she can be) Ileni retires the identity of Athena and takes on the identity of Pallas to honour Zoe. Kind of exactly like in the myth.

This is where the sort of background structure theme comes in. There has always been a kind of idea that modern day superhero culture in comics and media are kind of like the new mythology, you can probably see where I'm going with this. Taking the old pantheons and making them new again, not word for word, of course, but filling out the general "roles" to help making the construction of the world easier and in my opinion, more fun in both reinterpreting old hero archetypes and godly archetypes with a bit of a modern edge here and there.

Ileni of course fills out the role of the goddess Athena, she has yet to live up to her name and the story very much focuses on her developing into someone who really stands for that role.

Of course the role filling isn't really mentioned anywhere in universe past say, someone pointing out the self fulfilling prophecy of Ileni and Zoe's lives because of the names they chose.

So I'll start off with the role of 'Ares', which is filled by a tiger-man by the name of Tiberius, who is like his Greek counterpart mostly in attitude; hot blooded and violent, very gruff, but he does have a few soft spots here and there, one being for Ileni, as the two quickly become great friends (very much unlike Ares and Athena, if I recall correctly). His superhero inspiration comes from more pulp action heroes I suppose, though a lot of influence came from the tiger-man character in Soon I Will Be Invincible, which is a novel by Austin Grossman. Tiberius isn't too too fleshed out as a character, just a general idea.

I'm not sure if his cape name should be Tiberius, or that is just his 'civilian' name, I'm pretty terrible at naming superheroes with actual heroic titles, and end up giving them run of the mill people names instead. D'oh.

I don't know why I decided to include a tiger-man character, as I can't draw tigers, let alone slightly anthropomorphic ones.

Next up is someone to fill out the 'Aphrodite'/'Wonder Woman' role on the team. Well, if there is a team, I'm not too sure on the way that capes operate in this world, but I do want to strive for some degrees of realism.

Anyways, here's "Stella" (I am so bad at this name thing). Her back story kind of mixes that of Wonder Woman and Superman; she comes from a dead planet inhabited only by women, who were always a matriarchal society and upon reaching the technological ability, slowly fazed out males from their population by giving birth to clones of themselves or the combination of two women's DNAs, though this was much more expensive, and way less common, so the gene pool ended up pretty limited. The inherent problem with this is that lack of genetic variation and the halt of evolution lead to them becoming huge germaphobes (because them catching their death of cold was a very real threat, as an entire race) which lead to weaker immune systems and lack of varied thought (clones everywhere!) lead to lack of new ideas to fix this problem. In the end, they all died of a pandemic, their one survivor being Stella here, who rocketed off into the wild blue yonder in a random direction, a last ditch effort to preserve their culture. She wasn't the only one to be sent out, of course, but the only one who reached Earth.

Her powerset includes what is essentially a knock off of Blue Beetle III's powers in the sense that she can make almost anything out of her own dead cells and waste, usually in the pattern of stars (which is just a personal preference), and having come from a society of samey women, she has little shame about her body, hence the ridiculous get up. She also has improved strength and reflexes. Don't mind the lasso, I was mostly just dicking around when I drew this.

Again, not too too clear on her, or really any of the other characters I present here, just a general overview.

Being a girl, it's generally easier for me to come up with and draw girl characters, pulling from my own experiences and my friends, so I've come up with mostly the female half of the roster. This character being the Artemis/Black Canary paragon: Cabriole. Or Pirouette, I'm not quite sure which, yet.

She is a street level hero, trained initially in ballet (hence the name) but branched out to martial arts early in her life to compensate for her tiny size. She became a hero as a way of thrill seeking and helping people she sees as victims (a role which is often assigned to her due to her appearance, so she is very much rebelling against that as well)

Being small (around 5'0) and Asian, she is often mistaken for being much younger than she is (mid twenties) and often makes the uninformed very uncomfortable by the way she dresses.

She is very independent and on the fiery side, she may be a legacy character, though I haven't thought on the implications of her being a second generation heroine and how that would effect her persona.

Diamond Beck is the Hera/Powergirl of the group. She is highly dignified and very powerful, she is also a bit on the snooty side and very much a material girl.

Her name originates from the fact that she is strong enough to crush carbon into diamonds, which she wears as part of her costume, and she has the rest of the stock power set of flight, strength, invulnerability, enhanced senses etc.

I see her as doing the hero thing for the attention, and really playing the celebrity, but always coming off as polite and well mannered for PR reasons, but under that she is kind of a conceited bitch.

Now for the Hermes/Flash/Quick Silver.

Luc is a Russian speedster (Luc means ray, as in "ray of light" in Russian) who is generally very friendly, open and a bit of a goofball. He hardly ever takes anything seriously.

It's hard to imagine how such a character could come to be considering the state of Russia for the last few decades, but he somehow manages it.

His costume is super boring, and I should really work on it.

aaaand to finish off this flurry of initial posting, a good look at Pal's costume/Ileni's civilian clothes.

This is a bit outdated, and I've redesigned Ileni's features to be a bit more recognizable at first glance, but this is the general idea of things.

I still have much of the main pantheon left open. I do have a few vague ideas for some of the gentlemen, and absolutely nothing for villains, or 'secondary' pantheons comprised of other mythological groups (Norse, Indian, Aztec, Native American, Slavic, etc. Maybe one of these could act as the villainous pantheon, or just a compilation of various 'evil' forces from each).

My remaining ideas are pretty much as follows
-The Zeus/Supes (possibly Hercules/Superboy?) character being a second generation Supes type character, his father having retired (or maybe died, or maybe gone off planet to help with cosmic troubles for the rest of his days) and generally a bit disenchanted with the superhero world having grown up in it.
-A Hades/Batman character who is possibly British of Pakistani descent with (brace for herpderp) aspergers, hence his fixation/obsession with superheroes that lead him to become one himself despite lacking any powers. He is a self made millionaire and a genius, kind of in the Da Vinci vain (the theory that Da Vinci had aspergers being the initial inspiration here) and has a female sidekick, who would play the role of Persephone/Robin/Batgirl/Squire.
-If I were to make a Hapheatus character, he would definitely have to be handicapped as in the myths, perhaps something like an Oracle character but with developing tech/costumes as well as information for the community?

Anyways, what do you guys think? I am pretty open to opinions and changes in characters and new ones as well, so have at it, I humbly come to you creative people of /coc/ to improve upon the concepts already present in my own little brain.

It's an interesting concept you got there, and hopefully you'll carry through with it in time. Not much for me to say aside from Luc needing a better costume though.

>>28500

>Batman with Asperger's.

YES. DO IT. But only do it if you can accurately portray it, otherwise it'll come off as straight up average autism.

I honestly love this idea, but I can't think of anything to note other than the imbalance of genders, which I honestly complain about in most any story, so.

>>28512

Thank you!

Agreed on the costume, it's hard to come up with the right colour combination to both set him apart and keep it simple.

>>28519

I am happy to see someone actually going for the aspergers idea, generally the reaction I got before was not quite so positive.

I am in desperate need of male characters, being a girl and having many different, close, female friends (many of whom serve as the basis for the different characters in this story, whether it be their body type, personality or background) I find it much easier to conceptualize lady superheroes. Dudes not so much.

Anyone have any further ideas to throw out there? Building the world is an important aspect I have yet to really think about, I imagine there are different "teams" or "leagues" depending on the mythological origins of the characters, so all the Greek are the main North American ones, the Norse are European, Indian for Asia etc. Though those are gross over simplifications that omit a lot of possibly interesting characters from Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian and Northern Tribal pantheons, not to mention folk tales/religions of Eastern Europe and Africa.

>>28500
>Batman with Asperger's.

Random shit:
>>28493
Love the idea of an Uncle Ben figure actively steering the person with powers, but NOT for sinister motives or because they're a control freak. Just the result of being a friend.

I have seen a lot of Greek God themed Superheroes. But there are ways to keep it fresh. Keep it all subtle, never make it explicit. Or make the Superhero homages even more explicit and varied, move beyond the justice league. Or go Crazy and use fake religions, have a Cthulu/Legion of Doom. Or even better, make your own brand new pantheon, have that stir up shit among the established herogods.

But if you do go with the Greek Gods/JLA. The Roman Gods/Avengers is a must.

Though that's just me over thinking the metafiction.

>>28496
She better have started with Savate.

>>28540
Forgot to give genuine praise for the level of thought work and great character designs.

This could turn out pretty cool.

>>28540

I love the meta.

I'm going strongly with the Greek myth just because I'm so familiar with it, I have a pretty good book on world myth in my possession, and could probably dive in there for inspiration, but I am nowhere near as explicitly informed about any other pantheon like that of the Ancient Greeks.

Really I think the Roman gods are pretty much the exact same 'characters' with different names, so maybe we could go Norse/Avengers?

Of course all this God stuff is behind the curtain structure to help with creating characters and add richness to the world. Past the painfully obvious (and purposeful) Athena/Pallas parallels, nothing will ever be said expressly, and the superhero's I cite are usually just to quickly give an idea as to the flavour and powerset of the characters I've made.

Cthulu inspired world destroyer threat, a la Galactus.

But from within the earth itself.

>>28541
>iswydt.jpg

>Really I think the Roman gods are pretty much the exact same 'characters' with different names, so maybe we could go Norse/Avengers?

Personally, I don't really care for that idea; Avengers already have Thor. Though the Roman gods are the very same as in Greek mythology they were colored by highly contrasting Roman values and many gods were worshiped or ignored in accordance to those values. For example, the Greeks valued cleverness and so Athena was one of their most favored goddesses. The Romans had no taste for cunning and so preferred Mars while Ulysses, whose most outstanding heroic quality was his intelligence, was written off as "cruel." If not the Avengers, you could maybe make them into something like the Crime Syndicate. Love the Stella pic's name by the way.