Squadron Supreme/Characters

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Squadron Supreme

Expies of the Justice League, based on their Bronze Age and Silver Age incarnations. At the start of this story, they are recovering from mind control and faced with a collapse of civilization that makes them take steps they never would have considered in the past.

  • Secret Identity: Any team member who had one at the beginning of the story unmasked to regain the public's trust at the beginning of the Utopia Initiative.

Hyperion

The Superman Expy right down to having an Alliterative Secret Identity that he casually abandons at the start of this story. He seems to lack most of the Super Senses of his counter part which helps to explain why he is so often ignorant of the failings of his human teammates who struggle to keep up.

  • The Cape (trope)
  • Evil Twin: Played straight when Master Menace recruits Hyperion's Evil Twin to infiltrate the Squadron.
  • Flying Brick
  • Super Dickery: As noted, Hyperion casually reveals his secret identity to Linda Lake and informs her that the Love triangle was pointless because they could never reproduce. Way to break it to her Hype. He is also shown to be insensitive to the needs of his teammates, not because he's a jerk, but simply because he has no experience being weak and vulnerable.

Power Princess

The Wonder Woman Expy. A former utopian, long frustrated with simply beating up bad guys and monsters, Princess Zarda sees the initial civil unrest as a chance to rebuild society more in the image of the Utopian society that has since left her behind. Aside from being the leader throughout much of the initiative, she struggles with her aged husband's deteriorating health.

Doctor Spectrum

The Green Lantern Expy. The former astronaut is one of the less mature members of the team until his encounter with a teammate leads to him accidentally killing said teammate. He takes himself off combat duty for the rest of the story, one of the many strains on the team.

The Whizzer

The Flash Expy, based on the Barry Allen version of the character (except he's a mailman instead of a police scientist.) This version has a family which is the source of most of his strain. That combined with his speed, he frequently faces the temptation to simply run away in a fight.

  • Doesn't Like Guns: The Whizzer agrees with the team's plans to disarm the populace. This later causes a conflict when he's forced to attack the Institute of Evil with an automatic weapon.
  • Required Secondary Powers: The time he spends in a "hypermetabolic state" must be balanced with time spent in a hypometabolic state. When Squadron membership becomes a full time job, this gets to be difficult.
  • Super Reflexes
  • Super Speed

Amphibian

The Aquaman expy minus being the king of anything. He also lacks any telepathic abilities. He is the voice of dissent on the team eventually quitting over philosophical differences.

  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Amphibian is able to destroy the plans for the behavior modification device by ordering the already brainwashed Ape-X to do so. She must obey him because of that very device.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When it finally comes to light that the Golden Archer brainwashed Lady Lark, Amphibian feels quite justified in destroying the plans for the Behavior Modification device and every copy of the machine in house before swimming off into the sunset.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: He quits the Squadron and isn't seen for the remainder of the series after Golden Archer is expelled for using the behavior modification device on Lady Lark to make her love him. He didn't quit because he believed Archer was innocent, he quit because the Squadron had the nerve to actually punish Archer for using the device that they all lobbied for. On top of that, he was against the election of former criminals into the Squadron, knowing full well they couldn't say "no" because of the modification.

Tom Thumb

An aging genius little person (though, unlike his Justice League counterpart, he can't shrink, he's simply short) and the backbone of the initiative. Tom is responsible for inventing the miraculous technologies that give the initiative a chance at success though those efforts are not always appreciated.

Nuke

Likely a stand-in for the Justice League member Firestorm, though the teenaged Nuke's powers merely involved flight and radiation blasts. Unfortunately, as his powers increase, his ambient radioactivity increases to the point where it's dangerous for others leading to his parents deaths. After this, Nuke basically loses it and dies while lashing out at Doctor Spectrum.

  • Can't Spit It Out: By the time he has permission to tell his parents about his secret identity, he can't bring himself to do it because it means admitting that he was unwittingly killing them.
  • Clingy Costume: As his power continues to grow stronger, Nuke has to keep wearing a lead-lined suit to avoid killing everyone around him.
  • Despair Event Horizon
  • Freak-Out: After his parents die.
  • Never My Fault: He blames Tom Thumb for the deaths of his parents, because he couldn't cure cancer in time. It's obvious that they contracted cancer as a result of exposure to Nuke's powers, but in Nuke's defense, he didn't plan for them to get sick because of his powers.

Lady Lark

The Black Canary expy. When she starts to have feelings for American Eagle, her current boyfriend brainwashes her into loving only him.

  • Clingy Jealous Girl: After the brainwashing, which worked entirely too well on her, to the point where her boyfriend (who wanted to marry her) did everything he could to get away from her.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Lark was an up and coming pop singer before being forcibly experimented on to gain superpowers. She'd have much rather stayed a pop star.
  • Sonic Scream: As a result of her modified vocal chords. The problem is, she can no longer sing with them.

Golden Archer

The Green Arrow expy. His defining moment in this story comes when Lark refuses his proposal (made after an especially close brush with death.) He chooses to use Tom Thumb's new behavior modification device to make Lark love him.

Arcanna

Arcanna Jones, a stand-in for Zatanna, is the Squadron's resident magician and illusionist. Like Whizzer, Arcanna is married and has kids, three of them, and near the halfway point of the series, becomes pregnant a fourth time. Like Amphibian she objected to the use of the behavior modification machines Tom Thumb built, but didn't voice any further objections after their installation.

  • Glamour: Arcanna has no qualms about her body size while pregnant, but makes it so she doesn't look like it because that way her teammates won't treat her like she's made of glass.
  • Happily Married
  • Master of Illusion
  • Pregnant Badass: Spends half of the series pregnant, but uses her powers to conceal it in order to put her teammates at ease. The series ends with Arcanna successfully giving birth to her fourth child.
  • Shattering the Illusion: A subversion. Arcanna drops the illusion and reveals her pregnancy after her water breaks in the middle of the battle between the Squadron and Nighthawk's allies.
  • Stocking Filler: Like Zatanna, she wears fishnets.

Nighthawk and the resistance

Nighthawk, the Batman expy, quits the team as soon as the Utopia initiative is proposed. After almost attempting to kill his friend Hyperion to derail the initiative before it begins, he convinces himself there must be a better way and tries to recruit a team to infiltrate the Squadron and set them up for failure.

  • Badass Normal
  • Batman Gambit: Nighthawk finds unknown superhumans to join the Squadron while they're looking for more manpower, then has one of them steal a copy of the Behavior Modification device so that Master Menace can reverse engineer it to free the brainwashed bad guys the Squadron has coopted. At the climax of the series, he has more than half the Squadron on his side for the final confrontation.
  • Our Presidents Are Different: In the backstory, Nighthawk served as the President of the United States. That's right. President Batman. Sadly, his administration ended in disgrace because he spent most of it Brainwashed and Crazy. Also as a result, he's not in top physical condition in this story though his mind is as sharp as ever.
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