An Emotional Mort

Last weeks morts were the Young Avengers. I guess there is nothing worse for a blog like this than a confusing picture. For the record, I was thinking that the whole team would be the morts (notice the title is plural), but since I was unclear, Randy gets full points. As for the rest of you, check your own papers (starting with the girl with a bow):

Hawkeye (Kate Bishop)- Kate was the first person that the Young Avengers tried to save, but being new at the hero game, they messed it up pretty badly and had to be rescued by her. She's good with a Bow and Arrow as well as other types of weapons.

Hulkling (Teddy Altman)- One of the things that makes the YA's interesting is that very little is as it seems. Although one would assume that this junior Avenger had some sort of a run-in with a gamma bomb, he is actually the half-skrull son of the Kree hero Captain Mar-Vell and therefore a shape-shifter.

Patriot (Eli Bradley)- The masked guy holding the metal head is the team's Captain America, although his lineage actually traces back to Isaiah Bradley, the so-called "Black Captain America".

Iron Lad (Kang the Conqueror)- A teenaged Kang the Conqueror learned that he would become one of the Avengers most persistent enemies and so traveled back in time to enlist the aid of the Avengers to keep him from this fate (time travel makes my head hurt). As you can see, the plan didn't go so well.

Stature (Cassie Lang)- The daughter of Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man. Interestingly, Cassie also appears in the kiddie title "Marvel Adventures:Avengers" as Giant Girl.

Wiccan (Billy Kaplan)- Although he looks like the knockoff Thor, the current theory is that he is one of the twin children of the Scarlet Witch (his "brother", Thomas Shepherd, has also appeared in the series).

Alright, hopefully there will be no confusion about the new mort. For the record, he isn't technically a Marvel or DC character, so maybe everyone will be on equal footing.

Marvelous Morts

The morts from last week were indeed from the Tangent universe, one of the 52 universes that comprise the DC multiverse and the source of a big DC event in 1997. I believe that Randy guessed just about everyone right, but as a review:

1) The red fish looking guy is one of the Sea-Devils, RedFin by name.

2)The woman in green carrying the lantern is Tangent's Green Lantern

3)The blonde sparkling girl is Flash

4)Mr. Muscles in the foreground is the Atom

5) The military guy is one of the Metal Men, and the current president of the Tangent America.

I recently picked up volume one of the Tangent series in TPB form and it was pretty good. I was particularly interested in their wide use of genre's, with only the Flash and the Atom being anything like a Super Hero story. Of those two, I really liked the Flash, since it was more a silver-agey story, where Atom was much closer to Watchmen with secrets and twists and turns. The Green Lantern was a Tales from the Crypt style Horror Anthology, with this GL having the ability to raise people from the dead so that they can finish one task. The Metal Men was a straight war story, albeit a good one, while the Sea Devils was a little more complicated to place in a genre, but was good in its own right.

Alright to make Joanna happy, the new Mort is Marvel. Enjoy!

Alternative Morts

Katarina Armstrong is the most recent version of the Spy Smasher. In college, Katarina first met Barbara Gordon, the young woman who would become Batgirl and later Oracle. The two women quickly became rivals, competing on every field from athletics to scholarship to relationships. Leaving college, Katarina excelled in the shadowy realms of the U.S. government becoming a high-ranking anti-terrorism agent and, according to herself, the highest authority in the United States including the President. Recently, her government work brought her into contact with her college rival Barbara Gordon, and through blackmail she briefly gained control of Oracle's "Birds of Prey". This situation, however, was resolved when Katarina was confronted by the combined forces of every living Birds of Prey agent (in a fantastic four page spread) and told to forget that Oracle existed or else. By the way, if you aren't reading Birds of Prey, you really ought to be.

Okay, the new Morts are kind of tricky. You have heard the name of at least the front three, but take your best guess on all five.