During his first year operating in Superior City, the hero Renegade encountered several costumed criminals. Most were defeated and apprehended, sent to Mercy Island Penitentiary. Unfortunately the penitentiary was secretly under the control of the villain Carnage and the rogues were recruited into the army he was assembling for his plan to exact revenge on the city.
Dr. Edwin Reese was the director of the Sefton Asylum for the Criminally Insane, located in Superior City. Years of studying the psychoses of insane super-villains took their toll on Dr. Reese, eventually unleashing his own metahuman powers and transforming him into the psychopathic, emotion manipulating villain called Bughouse.
As Bughouse, Edwin would dress in the cliched horror movie killer gear of a hockey mask and carry around a pair of chainsaws or a combination of chainsaw and machete. His favorite tactic was to use his mental powers on large crowds in public venues, transforming bystanders into a panicked mob with fear or stripping their inhibitions and causing them to start to riot out of control. When the authorities would arrive to deal with the mob or riot Bughouse would revel in escalating the chaos, directing the crowds under his control to attack the police and using his powers on the police to provoke a violent response.
Bughouse was finally captured by Renegade with some assistance from another local hero, The Schwa, whose own mental instability made him immune to Bughouse's powers. Edwin was incarcerated in the very asylum where he was once director.
Bughouse has the psychic ability to affect a target's baser emotions. He uses this to cause fear and panic, or to lower inhibitions and incite rage, in large crowds. As Edwin Reese he was a skilled psychiatrist but now uses those skills solely to manipulate others.
Bughouse usually wears a reinforced hockey goalie mask and a bulletproof vest over a basic jumpsuit, paired with work gloves and steel-toed work boots. As noted he often carries a pair of chainsaws or a machete. Despite being inordinately skilled at using these items in combat Bughouse usually prefers to use them as tools of intimidation and fear and tries to avoid direct confrontation when he can.
Insane criminal gang leader who believes he is the Roman Emperor Caligula.
Chris Farr was a scientist obsessed with unlocking the potential of the human body as a renewable energy source. Farr's theories were revolutionary, implying the possibility of duplicating the energy production capabilities of a person on an industrial scale, but he had little success with his experiments. Finally, after teaming up with scientists from Cell 13 (the black operations division of the Jensik Medical Institute), Chris had a true breakthrough – a serum that could increase the energy production capabilities of the human body. To prove the serum would work, Chris tested it on himself.
The serum did what it was intended to, and much more. Chris' cells could now generate much more energy, but the serum also mutated his body and mind. Chris had become a living dynamo, his body was now made of a dense, conductive metal-like substance; a change that increased his strength, resilience, and density to superhuman levels. Chris could generate massive amounts of electrical energy. Mentally, the once driven but generally good scientist now acted like a selfish thug. He began using his newfound powers for thrills, not caring about any damage or injuries he caused in the process.
Now calling himself Coppertop, the former scientist began causing mayhem around Superior City. Attacking a modern art gallery (for no particular reason other than it suited him at the time) brought Coppertop to the attention of Renegade. A week later, when Coppertop struck at a Car, Truck, and Boat Show, the hero made his move to stop Chris. After a pitched battle Renegade finally managed to subdue Coppertop, leaving the villain for the authorities.
Coppertop later served as part of Carnage's army and was one of the villains occupying S.T.A.R. Labs. He was captured after Carnage's defeat and once again incarcerated.
The serum changed Coppertop's body into one made of a copper-colored metal. This had the effect of giving him superhuman strength as well as being resistant to damage. His body now constantly produced large amounts of electricity that Coppertop could put to a variety of uses. Coppertop's skin was almost constantly electrified, which guaranteed a nasty shock to anyone who touched him. By focusing the electrical power Coppertop could fire powerful bolts of lightning. With concentration Coppertop could also fly by manipulating the electricity to carry him along in the air.
Facing financial ruin after a string of failed fishing seasons, Paolo Murgheis took his trawler out into the Pacific one last time. The trip netted Paolo the catch of a lifetime, but it had nothing to do with fish; Paolo's net had snagged something unexpected, a hermetically sealed metal casket. Opening the casket, Paolo discovered that it contained a heavily-armed flying powered exoskeleton. The winged suit had no markings, and no other indications on it or the casket as to where it had come from or what it had been doing at the bottom of the ocean. Paolo had a history on the wrong side of the law, using his fishing boat to smuggle drugs from time to time, so he decided to take advantage of what fate had dropped into his lap and become a full-time criminal.
After practicing with the suit and its weaponry for a few weeks, Paolo set to the skies over Pacific City as the Cormorant. The suit's flight capabilities made second story jobs easy for Cormorant, and his robberies became more extravagant over time. Even so, Paolo felt there were already too many villains operating in Pacific City for him to make a real name for himself, so he set his sights to the north. Superior City had just seen the return of costumed heroes to the city after many years and Paolo figured he could get in on the ground floor. Cormorant's criminal career in Superior City lasted all of a week before he was defeated by the hero Renegade and arrested.
Cormorant's exoskeleton is an advanced flying weapons platform. The suit is armored against small arms fire and is capable of powered flight at high speeds. It is armed with both energy blasters and small guided missile launchers, all tied into an advanced fire control system that lets Paolo strike with great accuracy with even his moderate combat skill. The helmet has a built-in sensor suite that includes radar, thermal vision, and telescopic zoom. Paolo himself is a moderately skilled thief, and possesses enough mechanical skill to keep his exoskeleton in working condition.
The Court was originally a trio of costumed criminals secretly organized by Peter Wilde, the patriarch of the Wilde Family. Wilde was enraged by the appearance of a new hero using the Renegade name in Superior City and created The Court specifically to deal with the upstart. Wilde initially recruited William Cartwright III as the Duke to head up The Court and provided him the funds and equipment to form the group. Cartwright located the men who would become the remaining two members of the group, the Jester and the Wizard, and gave them their high tech equipment. The trio caused a scene at their first appearance, specifically to attract the attention of Renegade. They fell short of their task to take out the hero, and were instead defeated by him and arrested.
A couple of months later the Duke managed to escape from prison and set out to get revenge on Renegade but once again the hero emerged victorious. Incarcerated in Mercy Island Prison, the members of the Court were coopted in the villain Carnage's villainous army. Among the other villains present the Duke found a new recruit for his team, adding the Chamberlain as the fourth member of the group. This enlarged Court took part in Carnage's assault on Superior City but were sent back to prison when the plot was thwarted by the city's heroes.
William Cartwright III came from old money and enjoyed the easy life growing up. He took great pride in what he saw as his own nobility and lamented not being born in feudal times when he felt he would have been a proper noble in a royal court. Unfortunately for Cartwright he gambled most of his fortune, leaving him in debt to some dangerous people. Peter Wilde paid off Cartwright's debts, who in repayment agreed to become the Duke and form the Court for his new benefactor.
A gifted performer, Bernard Peterson was the proverbial class clown growing up. He was also a natural athlete, and seeking a way to combine this with his love for jokes and comedy Bernard decided to join the circus when he finished high school. He trained as a clown and an acrobat and was a draw for a while, but a compulsive need to play pranks soon turned the rest of the performers against him. He moved on from circus to circus before falling in with a sketchy carnival group, one that augmented the meager earnings in the ring with a side gig of crime.
Bernard took to the crime side of things as well as he had to the acrobatics and performing side. He learned well, adding some criminal skills as well as some martial arts and weapons training to his existing skillset. Once again it was Bernard's need to play jokes that spoiled things for the young man. When committing robberies he simply could not stop himself from performing jokes on his victims and occasionally his partners. On one such occasion Bernard spent so much time trying to set up a joke at the scene of a crime that he was still there when the police arrived and he was arrested.
The Duke arranged for Bernard's escape from prison and recruited him into the Court, providing him with a costume and equipment as the Court's Jester.
Douglas Everett was a moderately successful stage actor who became an early Internet video pioneer, but went bankrupt when his ideas turned out to be too far ahead of their time. Seeking to rebound he delved into fringe theories and occultism, trying to merge New Age beliefs with technology. Experimenting with combining pharmaceuticals with radical computer imagery to try and achieve a heightened state of consciousness proved more successful than Douglas had anticipated when it triggered his metagene, granting him the ability to project realistic illusions into the minds of others and mesmerize them with hypnotic imagery.
Everett began using his powers, combined with his chemistry and computer skills, to put on esoteric performance pieces, attracting audiences with the promise of expanding their consciousness. Unfortunately for Douglas not everyone was pleased with him drugging his audience and the authorities were closing in when the Duke arrived on the scene. He recruited Everett in the group as the Court Wizard, augmenting Douglas' metahuman abilities with technological equipment.
The Chamberlain was a forgotten criminal, languishing in Mercy Island so long under Carnage's rule he had forgotten everything about himself. The Duke found him and turned him into his own Black Knight, the latest addition to the Court. The truth is the Chamberlain really is a medieval knight who had been one of Futurion's Time Terrors. The future Chamberlain was abandoned after being defeated and despite being locked away forgotten in Mercy Island Prison for 30 years he has not aged at all.
The Duke spent his youth learning all the skills he believed a modern nobleman should possess, becoming an expert in martial arts, military tactics, vehicles, and weaponry. He is in excellent physical condition and possesses lightning fast reflexes. The Duke's preferred weapon is the sword that Peter Wilde provided him, one that is of high quality and has the added ability to project potent bolts of electricity. The Duke also carries his Rod of Rulership, which lets him fly, protects him with a force field, can fire a deadly energy blast and, befitting its name, allows him to mentally control the actions of others.
The Jester is a trained acrobat who also happens to be a skilled thief and getaway driver. The Duke has augmented the Jester's skillset with weapons and martial arts training. The Jester is also equipped with an arsenal of high tech weapons, all patterned after the accoutrements of a comedic performer and clown. These include juggling balls that double as different types of grenades, a weighted rubber chicken that can be used as a bludgeoning weapon, "cream pies" that expand and harden on impact to trap a target, and many others.
The Wizard has a diverse range of skills, being a reasonably talented actor in addition to possessing expertise in computer programming, electronic engineering, and chemistry. He has also studied occultism and truly considers himself a magician of sorts, though he does not possess any true mystical abilities. In addition to his metahuman illusion and hypnosis powers, the Wizard has been equipped with a cloak that can turn him invisible, an amulet that surrounds him with a protective field that can deflect incoming attacks, and a pair of gloves with built in energy blasters.
As a fully trained knight of old, the Chamberlain is skilled in melee weapons and hand-to-hand combat in addition to being a capable equestrian. His time under Futurion also let him learn to use more modern weapons and vehicles. After joining the Court the Chamberlain was equipped with a high tech suit of armor resembling the plate armor of a medieval knight but that contains a protective force field as well as granting him the ability to see in the dark. He carries a sword similar to the Duke's, but that fires a powerful laser blast rather than electricity, and he also typically carries around a more typical , though modern high quality, crossbow. As noted before, the Chamberlain does not appear to age normally, if at all, having remained physically the same age for the last thirty years.
Margaret grew up deathly afraid of spiders. When her metahuman powers started to surface at age 14, powers that resembled the abilities of the feared arachnids, Margaret's mind snapped. She fell into a seven-year coma, during which time her powers matured, and her old personality vanished. When she came out of the coma Margaret was gone, in her place was Spinnerette, a cunning predator, much more suited to her own perception of what a spider should be. Armed initially with a stolen police grenade launcher and several rounds of adhesive gel, Spinnerette began her reign of terror over Superior City.
Her years-long murderous spree was finally ended by Renegade, but she has returned time and again.
Spinnerette has several spider-like metahuman abilities, chief among them is her poisonous touch. Depending on the intensity, Spinnerette's touch can cause numbness, blindness, paralysis, or death. Physically, Spinnerette has superhuman reflexes, agility, and strength; and she is able to crawl along any surface like a spider. She also seems to give off an aura that triggers apprehension and fear in some people, akin to the reaction a person might have to the presence of an actual spider but more intense.
Spinnerette also carries around her "Web-Gun", a refined version of the police grenade launcher she first stole that still fires adhesive projectiles she uses to immobilize a target.
Bert Larson was a champion race car driver on the local Midwest circuit whose big break ended in tragedy with a near-fatal crash in a race in California. Larson survived the crash but lost both his arms as well as suffering disfiguring burns. Shortly after regaining consciousness in the hospital, a despondent Larson was visited by a mysterious doctor with a strange offer. The doctor, clearly not part of hospital staff, told Larson he could be repaired, made even better than before the accident, and all he had to do was sign a contract. Feeling he had nothing to lose at that point, Larson agreed.
The strange doctor smuggled Larson out of the hospital and brought him to warehouse equipped with some of the most advanced medical technology that Larson had ever seen. Soon Larson was strapped to an operating table and anesthetized. When Larson woke it was several weeks later, and found that his body had been rebuilt just as the doctor had promised. He had new cybernetic arms, armor plating in his torso, and further cybernetic enhancements to his eyes, brain and nervous system.
Once the doctor was satisfied the operation had been successful he sprung the first condition of the contract on Larson: the man owed the doctor ten million dollars. It didn't have to be paid all at once and the doctor did not particularly care how Larson got the money; in fact he fully expected Larson to obtain it illegally. Larson was not initially fond of the idea, but ultimately he decided that the world had been cruel to him so why not be cruel back. So Larson began using his newfound abilities to rob armored cars and banks, taking to calling himself Tele-Fist and slowly began paying off his debt to the doctor.
Soon, however, the jobs started taking a toll on Tele-Fist's cybernetics and an encounter with the hero Manhunter in Pacific City led to one of Tele-Fist's arms being blown off. Tele-Fist escaped the hero and made his way back to the doctor to get his arm repaired. That's when Larson learned of another clause in the contract - each time the doctor had to repair Tele-Fist's cybernetics added another million dollars to Larson's debt to the doctor.
Needing a way to make more money, Tele-Fist contacted the super-villain placement agency known as The Exchange. When the doctor informed Larson that such an arrangement was strictly forbidden under the contract it was the final straw. Tired of being manipulated and screwed over by the contract, Tele-Fist attacked the doctor and used his arms to rip the man's head off. Shockingly, the doctor was revealed to be a robot. As the head rolled away trailing wires and sparks, it said "See you around" before the warehouse began to self-destruct. Tele-Fist escaped the destruction, but understood that the doctor was still out there somewhere and at some point the terms of the contract would need to be fulfilled.
Tele-Fist used The Exchange to line up better jobs, and The Exchange also put him in contact with their sister organization Fabricator's Inc., who could help him maintain his cybernetics. Tele-Fist realized he was putting himself in someone else's debt, but this time he was going in with his eyes open and understood his obligations. He also felt that this was his best bet to keep going and to eventually be able to repay the original contract. Tele-Fist also knew he could use the connections he would make to start building his own network.
The Exchange began lining up jobs for Tele-Fist all along the west coast of the United States. After a string of successful jobs he eventually found himself in Superior City. Tele-Fist faced the hero Renegade during the latter's first year in the city, managing to evade capture. A year or so later he would encounter one of Renegade's teammates in the new Enforcers of Justice, the alien Digit, and would again manage to escape. Tele-Fist's luck finally ran out several weeks later when he was confronted by another Enforcer, this time the hero Mystère. Unfortunately for Tele-Fist he was no match for a hero who could use her techno-magical abilities to order his mechanical limbs to simply stop working.
Tele-Fist remains in custody, though his debts to both The Exchange and the mysterious doctor mean he will be looking for a means to escape as soon as possible.
The mysterious doctor not only provided Larson with cybernetic arms, he also reinforced Larson's spine and torso, granting him superhuman strength with his new arms. In addition to the strength the arms can also extend out up to 15 yards away, an ability that led to Larson choosing the villain name Tele-Fist. The cybernetic enhancements also included augmentation of Tele-Fist's eyes, granting him telescopic, microscopic, and night vision; all useful abilities in the villain's chosen career of thief. Cybernetic implants in Tele-Fist's brain and nervous system grant him superhuman reflexes and also help scramble his brainwave patterns in a way that interferes with telepathic attacks against his mind (an ability he has not yet realized he possesses).
The Toy Master burst onto the scene by sending an army of giant animated toys to attack Superior City. The Toy Master appeared on television threatening to have his toys kill everyone, giving no reason nor making any demands to prevent this from happening. While the authorities attempted to contain the attacking toys, the hero Renegade was able to track the source of the toys to an abandoned toy factory and confronted the villain behind it. The Toy Master proved to be superhumanly strong and the battle between he and Renegade was a vicious one, with the villain able to shrug off most of Renegade's attacks. A stray explosive thrown during the fight started a fire that soon engulfed the abandoned factory. Renegade escaped but the Toy Master apparently did not. As the inferno raged the toys attacking the city returned to normal, ending the threat. A search of the ruins turned up no trace of the Toy Master except the melted remains of the giant plastic doll's head he wore as a mask.
In reality the Toy Master was just another enlarged and animated toy. The real culprit was a mysterious metahuman who calls himself simply the Toy. He was also present in the factory during the battle but disguised as an actual toy, specifically an action figure because a side effect of the Toy's powers was that he was permanently shrunk to a size of just a few inches tall. The Toy has not appeared since, so it is possible that he perished in the blaze that destroyed the factory, his origins and motives still a mystery.
The Toy Master was an army soldier doll enlarged to human size, animated and controlled by the Toy. It possessed superhuman strength and was resistant to most attacks due to being made of plastic. It was only stopped when it melted in the flames of the burning factory. The Toy is a metahuman who is stuck shrunk down to size of an action figure. He possesses the ability to enlarge inanimate objects and animate and control them. He used the power exclusively on toys, but it is not known if this was a limitation of his powers, a psychological compulsion, or simply a choice. He could enlarge objects to nearly 20 times their regular size, enough to grow a typical action figure to the size of a normal human. His enlarged and animated toys possessed high levels of strength and durability. The Toy was able to enlarge and control large numbers of toys simultaneously but it did require a high level of concentration. When he was either distracted or perhaps incapacitated by the fire at the toy factory all of the toys under his control became inanimate again and returned to their normal sizes.
