Rogues Gallery is a graphic novel about a team of super-villains who try to stop climate change.

For almost a hundred years the colorful heroes of THE FREEDOM COUNCIL have fought the bizarre, sinister, world-domination ambitions of O.V.E.R.L.O.R.D. This has been the status quo—patriotic heroes, mysterious vigilantes, gods and technological marvels fighting the remnants of the Axis Powers—evil geniuses, inhuman monsters, dark magic and walking weapons of mass destruction. With neither side having an advantage, it seems like the never ending battle against evil, might actually be never ending.

Now, O.V.E.R.L.O.R.D. has realized that their doomsday weapon will only work if anthropogenic climate change is reversed, and this becomes their new goal, leaving their heroic counterparts in a moral quandary.

Rogues Gallery is a satire that pokes fun at super-hero tropes but also offers some insight into the nature of the real problems (and real villains) that plague humanity.

The book is written by Owen Hammer with art by Mariano Navarro and Hernán Cabrera—the team that brought you the graphic novel Von Bach (also successfully funded by a Kickstarter campaign).

THE CHARACTERS

The characters of Rogues Gallery are meant to evoke the archetypes of heroes and villains from comic books. The story starts off like a generic superhero comic, and then takes a sharp turn. 

DOCTOR FRIEDRICH NULL developed advanced weapons for the Axis Powers during World War II. When the war ended, Doctor Null kept his cohort of super-powered agents together as O.V.E.R.L.O.R.D.—Omniscient Vanguard Engaged in Radical Liberation Organizing Rightful Dominion (the acronym has actually changed several times). He believes that super-powered individuals are the true “master race” who have a right to rule the world and for decades, self-styled super-villains have allied with him.

SHOOTING STAR began her career as sickly Vera Jacobs. At 100 pounds, 5 foot tall, she was hardly the type of person to become America’s secret weapon, until she was transformed by the “Shooting Star” procedure into a superhuman warrior.

After victory in World War II, Shooting Star kept the Allied superhuman agents together into a new force for good dubbed THE FREEDOM COUNCIL. She has been leading them since and has been instrumental in mitigating superhuman attacks for decades.

The brains of O.V.E.R.L.O.R.D.—the being known as COMPUTOR—was originally an artificial  intelligence created by Doctor Null. Eventually, Computor was housed in an android body and is treated like an independent person.

Computor is constructed out of indestructiblium and is impervious to all weapons. He is capable of trillions of calculations per second and his ability to extrapolate future conditions makes him almost clairvoyant.

The man eventually known as SPOOK began training himself in martial arts, science and  criminology. He adopted his alter-ego as a way of being a source of fear to criminals—he “spooks” them.

It is widely believed that Spook is actually some kind of undead spirit of vengeance, that story bolstered by the many times he has been witnessed to die. The truth is that Spook has faked his death multiple times.

He is the only costumed activist with a secret identity. Even though he has not shared his secret with his colleagues, they trust him implicitly and vice versa.

DRAGON LADY has been described as Chinese, Siamese, Mongolian and just “Asian.” In 1942, she was identified as Japanese subject Megumi Nozawa, the country’s contribution to the Axis Powers’ elite forces.

After World War II, she joined her comrade and lover, Doctor Null, in O.V.E.R.L.O.R.D., buying into Null’s dogma of the natural right of superhumans to rule the world.

As a child, LO-RA was evacuated from the planet Syrax before the entire planet exploded.

She remained hidden in a small town in the United States but felt that she had to come forward when she determined that the Axis Powers posed an existential threat to Earth. She operated for the U.S. Department of Defense as “Space-Girl”—a pseudonym she dropped very quickly.

Nothing is more terrifying to her than her home planet being destroyed a second time.

The story is 180 pages and takes place in nine chapters, each one a twenty-page comic. We are seeking funding for issue 1, but we will publish all nine issues if we receive sufficient funding.