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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 10, 2024 23:39:08 GMT
The powers of each of the members are actually quite diverse, and their origins should reflect that. To me, discovering another magic artifact is far too similar to the Book of Answers or the H-Dial.
Remember that the Sentinels of Magic is just a nickname given to them by the press for the incredible powers and technology they wielded, but they just referred to themselves as the Sentinels. All of the members have different sources of power, only one of them actually being a magic-user:
1. Johnny Constantine -- magic-user (he's the grandfather of John Constantine, Hellblazer)
2. Doc Harvard Yale -- owns the magic Book of Answers
3. Number 99 -- an earth elemental like Swamp Thing, a U.S. Army Air Force pilot who died in flames to rise again as the muck monster of his age
4. Mac Maine -- invented an atomic-powered device enabling flight and creating things at will
5. Black Star -- metahuman
6. Hal King -- owns an H-Dial (completely different from the one Robby Reed found), the origin of which remains unknown
7. The Stainless Steel Cat -- has incredibly advanced metallic armor that forms over his body at will, the origin of which remains unknown (but strongly resembles nanites or nanobots)
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Post by dans on Mar 10, 2024 23:48:30 GMT
OK, finding a magical token is indeed very similar to finding the H Dial. So I will look otherwhere. I sill want to find his origin in North America, though. And this passage still suggests magic to me...
“It’s definitely strange enough to warrant investigation,” Harry Hutchinson remarked. “But why call upon us? Only Doc and M.C. here have any expertise in scientific matters.”
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Post by redsycorax on Mar 10, 2024 23:54:47 GMT
Perhaps the reason that the armour is felomorphic is because it originated from an alien civilisation of felinoid sorcerors and Roland has some enhanced psionic or morphogenetic affinity with cats because he's descended from warrior priests who served Bubastic, Sehkmet or Mefdet in the past, some of whom were mages? The talisman could serve as a metamorphic node of some sort.
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Post by dans on Mar 11, 2024 0:07:25 GMT
Perhaps the reason that the armour is felomorphic is because it originated from an alien civilisation of felinoid sorcerors and Roland has some enhanced psionic or morphogenetic affinity with cats because he's descended from warrior priests who served Bubastic, Sehkmet or Mefdet in the past, some of whom were mages? The talisman could serve as a metamorphic node of some sort. Thanks. I am just trying to find an origin that is different from so many others we've read or even written in the past. I guess having a human mage give him his powers isn't that different from having Shazam give Billy his powers. And having a god give him his powers has been done before. And getting powers from aliens has been done before too. Maybe there aren't any new origins left... I guess we are stuck with some variation of: Born great, achieve greatness, or having greatness thrust upon one...
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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 11, 2024 0:37:16 GMT
There are no original secret origins left.
You could take a page from Wolverine's origin (given his similarity) and have Roland be the subject of a government experiment, the only one of his kind. It's possible that what looks like technology is actually Roland's metagene, or a very strange mutation similar to Colossus of the X-Men.
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Post by redsycorax on Mar 11, 2024 0:46:17 GMT
But perhaps differentiate Roland from Wolverine through giving him a pacifistic temperament and mindset? Hey, perhaps give him a Mennonite or Quaker background?!
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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 11, 2024 0:48:08 GMT
I don't know about that idea. They tried that with the original Dove, and it never worked. Plus, Roland DiGrasso as the Stainless Steel Cat is a fierce warrior.
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Post by redsycorax on Mar 11, 2024 1:05:58 GMT
In which case, perhaps harken back to the ancient origin angle? If he's a warrior, then if you want to go down that road, have his talisman and armor related to Sekhmet or Mefdet. Both of them would fit the bill for this character quite well if you did. I know magical enchantment and empowerment isn't original, but in this context, it would be. Apart from Doctor Fate, Isis, Black Adam, the Earth-Two Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Metamorpho and Element Woman, how many characters have ancient Egyptian origin stories beside? And this one is sufficiently different. Ra and Isis are usually the only deities from the Egyptian pantheon that are usually referenced in this setting. If it was Sekhmet or Mefdet, it'd be a new departure and sufficiently different and original.
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Post by dans on Mar 11, 2024 1:47:20 GMT
We actually have no real clues about his personality and whether he was actually an implacable warrior against other humans or not. In the only story he actually appeared in, he was fighting demons from Hell, and he was ripping them to shreds. We don't know if he fought the same way against humans.
If his name was inspired by Jim DiGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, DiGriz was not a violent individual; he preferred to outthink his opponents rather than outfight them. If he is inspired by Wildcat as has also been suggested, Wildcat is also not a berserk killer. My plan was to try and base him on somewhat on these two inspirations, and have him rely on non-fatal force as much as possible, and the terrible killing machine we saw when he was facing demons from Hell was not his normal fighting form.
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Post by dans on Mar 11, 2024 12:18:33 GMT
how about this, then... since Harry Harrison was the creator of the Stainless Steel Rat, Jim DiGriz; the holder of the H-Dial in the Sacrifices story, Harry Hutchinson, who was inspired by Starsky and named after Harry Harrison, is the creator of the Stainless Steel Cat. Once before he figured out how to use the dial correctly, he dialed, and instead of him temporarily changing into a hero, a brand new permanent hero was created: The Stainless Steel Cat!
I remember a story in which Chris (I think) was screwing around and he dialed Villain, and in another pre-crisis story, it was shown that at least one H-Dial had powers other than just dialing up new heroes. Harry's dial pre-dates the dials of Robby, Chris, and Virginia (and Kiku), so it may have been a prototype with unknown powers or it may have been somehow supercharged when Harry first found it, so the first time he used it, the result was different than any other time... or maybe it had just been lying around for a long time, and it took a little practice for it to get back into shape...
"As an epilogue to the Chris King/Vicki Grant Dial H series, The New Adventures of Superboy #50 features a story in which Chris King's watch is stolen from the Space Museum of the Legion of Super-Heroes' time period by a thief named Nylor Truggs, who flees with the dial to the ambiguous late 1960s/early 1970s era-Smallville of the original (Earth-One) Superboy by altering the dial's functions in some unexplained manner, allowing him to travel in time. Truggs further alters the H-dial to break the restriction that users can only transform into heroic identities, changing the "H" in the center of the dial to "V" for "villain". Truggs also makes the dial capable of changing individuals other than himself into villains if he desires; those transformed would then be under Truggs' control. Truggs transforms several of Clark Kent's high school friends, and forms a temporary alliance with a teenaged Lex Luthor, in a scheme to plant seismic devices in their time period so that Truggs can use those devices against the people of his own future time upon his return. Truggs' plan is foiled by Superboy, several members of the Legion, and Krypto the Superdog, the latter of which destroys the stolen H-Dial by crushing it in his jaws. Vicki Grant's H-Dial is also shown to have survived to the Legion's time—it is slated to replace King's dial in the museum display. As this story was published before the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths (which erased the Earth-One Superboy from continuity) and the subsequent rebootings of the Legion of Super-Heroes' history, it is unlikely that any elements of this story exist in current continuity.
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Post by dans on Mar 11, 2024 13:09:10 GMT
Not only that, the The New Adventures of Superboy #50 is a precursor story that suggests that the holder of an H-Dial may be able to travel between the 5EP universes as the agent for Grimoire Academy, as well as travel through time, if the Dial is appropriately used. (and we know Gallowglass has vast reality warping powers, so making changes to the functioning of the H-Dial seems well within his scope...)
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Post by dans on Mar 11, 2024 14:14:01 GMT
Oh HO! Here's another thought... before the Sentinels adopted Gareth, Roland was just a normal human, perhaps an extremely skilled cat burglar, spy and infiltrator, and young Gareth used his own powers to make Roland more powerful. Perhaps Roland felt like he was the weak link on the team, and Gareth waved his hand and said "no longer!"
I kind of like the idea that maybe Gareth enhanced the Sentinels a bit after they adopted him...
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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 11, 2024 15:44:49 GMT
Hal King had the H-Dial, actually, not Harry Hutchinson, who was Black Star. I’d prefer that each of their origins are distinct from each other. I still think the high tech origin idea I proposed could work. It fits with Earth-1 and could tie in to New Genesis or the far future of Earth.
If Roland was a cat burglar who preyed only upon gangsters and crooked politicians and the like, it seems fitting that he might stumble upon something in the course of emptying a safe that its owner had little idea about -- a piece of high-tech that could only be used once, which the safe owner had simply stored away for safekeeping until a scientist could examine it properly. Roland, with his inquisitive mind (curious like a cat) somehow activated it, and it covered him with armor, using Roland's image of himself as a cat-burglar to guide how it looked, with cat-ears on the helmet and a tail, along with claws extending from knuckles. The high-tech itself doesn't need to be explained in the origin story -- it's a reason for the powers, similar to Hal Jordan becoming a Green Lantern (which is expanded upon later), or Lana Lang gaining the powers of Insect Queen (which is never really followed up later). The real story is what Roland does now that he has this strange armor that makes him invulnerable to almost anything. Roland might even replace that piece of high-tech back into the safe, now that its single-use has been used, and the owner would be none the wiser.
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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 11, 2024 15:46:15 GMT
Oh HO! Here's another thought... before the Sentinels adopted Gareth, Roland was just a normal human, perhaps an extremely skilled cat burglar, spy and infiltrator, and young Gareth used his own powers to make Roland more powerful. Perhaps Roland felt like he was the weak link on the team, and Gareth waved his hand and said "no longer!" I kind of like the idea that maybe Gareth enhanced the Sentinels a bit after they adopted him... Gareth was too young and not powerful enough at the time to do so. His powers didn’t hit their peak until his battle with Valdemir in 1948, which broke through a barrier that had kept him from using his full abilities. Until then, Gareth's powers were much more subtle and believable in scope, so such a transformation would not have even occurred to him as being possible at the time.
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Post by DocQuantum on Mar 11, 2024 16:12:50 GMT
There are some great stories that could inspire the idea of Roland being a gentleman cat burglar, such as Arsene Lupin, the prototype for that type of character. They have their own kind of morality and have been known to help the innocent. It wouldn’t take much to set one like that on the straight and narrow. Though I could see Roland clashing with one of the other future Sentinels a la Sub-Mariner vs Human Torch, before Roland finally joins the fight against the Axis as a Sentinel. It might be interesting to have some rivalries in the team.
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