Hello Freedom Forcers! This is my first post in quite some time, but I assure you I have not been idle in the intervening months…and months…and months….*ahem* Well, I haven’t been too idle. I have been hard at work on more than a few projects, and I am just now finishing up my Pulp Adventures mod, featuring the likes of The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Green Hornet, plus many more! Be on the lookout for the release of this love letter to the classic pulp heroes in the next few months. Once I finish that project, I’ll be revisiting a few previous undertakings, including the DC Universe According to Grey! What follows are some ruminations and some little bits of fun on the subject of my sprawling version of the DC Universe.
I have recently been reading through a number of DC books, including classic issues of Detective Comics, Adventures Comics, The Brave and the Bold, and others. All of this four-color goodness has really set my mind on fire to get back to my DC Universe mod and start telling stories set in my all-time favorite comic setting. To that end, I’ve been toying with the hundreds of story ideas and half-finished plots that are lying around my hard drive in various stages of completion, and after hearing something interesting on The Who’s Who Podcast, of Aquaman Shrine and Firestorm Fan fame (say that three times fast!), I decided to play around with an old concept that didn’t make it into the first release of the DCUG.
One of the hosts of the show, the Irredeemable Shag, mentioned his ideal superhero team, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was, in large part, note for note the same team that I had created for a campaign in the DCUG. I’ve got a few missions written, but nothing was finished when I released the mod. However, it is on my list of campaigns that I want to finish when I return to my sprawling pet project. You see, years ago I watched the JLU episode “Wake the Dead.” In it, the Timmverse presented a DC version of the classic Marvel team, the Defenders, who took on a mystical threat. The team included my personal favorite hero, Aquaman, and I found the idea of a DC team that including the Sea King and dealt with mystical threats to be pretty intriguing. Now, I know what a few of you mega-DC fans are saying, ‘that team already exists, and it’s called Shadowpact!’ Well, I have to admit that I know next to nothing about them as a team, and even less of them as individual characters. I’m afraid they don’t interest me much in any event.
On the other hand, given Aquaman’s connection to Atlantis, it makes sense for him to be involved in sword and sorcery type tales occasionally. So, I created my own version of the team featuring a number of second string character for whom I had a soft spot, and I penned a story arc for them that promises to be great fun. The team featured:
- Aquaman (of course)
- Blue Devil
- Dr. Fate
- Firestorm (who, though not mystical in theme, fits the dynamic and acts as an intro character)
- Zatanna
- Shining Knight
As I started to think about these stories once again, I got an itch to throw part of the team into the Rumble Room and see how they played together. I took some screenshots, and I’ll share them with y’all now:
I began by choosing a subset of my nascent mystical team. So many choices! It’s getting hard to find anything among the huge roster of the DCUG these days! I’m pitting my team against a semi-random assortment of villains on a fantasy-style map.
Heroes assembled!
Matchstick is undaunted in the face of evil!
The heroes move out in search of some villains to vanquish.
And the villains find them! Yes, that’s obscure Hawkman villain I.Q.! Will his technological marvels be enough to stop our stalwarts?
He uses one of his hi-tech devices on Blue Devil… 
But it isn’t enough! Ouch, that’s going to hurt!
But I.Q. has distracted the heroes while the rest of the villains arrive, led by the powerful sorcerer Wotan!
Zatanna finds herself surrounded! Which spell to use, which spell to use…
The Mistress of Magic drives them back with a burst of dinw…errr, wind!
Aquaman uses his telepathy on Wotan, hoping to stun him and disable his defenses.
Zatanna prepares to finish off the Trickster, but Wotan prepares another spell!
The Shade enters the scene, stunning the Nuclear Man!
Meanwhile, Aquaman squares off with his half-brother…
And Firestorm is airborne again! Perhaps a little creative transmutation might be in order…
The Battle rages on!
Aquaman corners The Shade! Let’s see that nightstick save him now!
And Firestorm provides the coup de grace!
The heroes won the day, though Zatanna fell to the villains. I think I’ve got the beginning of a good team here, and I am looking forward to completing their campaign over the summer when I return to the DCU! I hope that y’all enjoyed this little bit of silliness as much as I did!
The Greylands 
